BR 

121 




I 



LETTER TO A FRIEND 

ON THE 

EVIDENCES AND THEORY 

OF 

CHRISTIANITY. 

LORD LINDSAY. 

4 



LONDON : 
J. HATCHARD AND SON, PICCADILLY. 
1841. 



LONDON . 

PRINTED BY G.J. PALMER, SAVOY STREET, STRAND* 



PREFACE. 



The following letter is published at the 
request of the friend to whom it was ad- 
dressed, and in the hope that its brevity- 
may prove a recommendation to some 
who have neither time nor inclination for 
the study of works of greater length and 
higher pretensions. In admitting, how- 
ever, this hope, the writer would earnestly 
refer to the " Introduction to the Critical 
Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scrip- 
tures/' by the Rev. T. Hartwell Home, 
as a library of information on all points 
connected with the evidences of the Chris- 
tian religion, and the illustration of the 
Bible ; and also to the works of the Rev. 



iv 



PREFACE. 



Henry Blunt, as embodying and enforcing, 
in a popular form, in pure English, and 
with perfect freedom from sectarian preju- 
dice, the theory and practice of that 
religion. 

August 11, 1841. 



A LETTER, 



My dear Sir, 
The conversation I had the pleasure of 
having with you last Saturday has been 
dwelling on my mind ever since, and now 
induces me to trouble you with a letter, 
which I apprehend may extend to rather 
an unwarrantable length. But as you 
evinced deep interest in its subject, and 
received with indulgence the few obser- 
vations I then made, I take the liberty to 
write them out, and lay them before you 
at greater length, and more connectedly 
than I could then express them. You 
will forgive me, I am sure, for commenc- 
ing, as I do, from the platform of natural 

b 



2 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 

religion : I do so, to avail myself of the 
presumptive argument in favour of reve- 
lation, — to me a very striking one. And 
I have dwelt equally upon every link of 
the argument, from conviction that belief 
is much more readily conceded to many 
of the distinctive tenets of Christianity, 
after their reasonableness and necessity 
have been recognised in their connexion 
with, and dependency upon, the rest of the 
system. You will wonder perhaps at my 
not sending you a single work on the 
evidences and theory of Christianity. But 
no one work that I am acquainted with, 
of moderate compass, treats of the whole 
argument consecutively, and in the pecu- 
liar manner in which I wish to lay it be- 
fore you. I will, therefore, now proceed, 
without further apology ; and pray forgive 
me if I appear, in the course of reasoning, 
at all dogmatical, which is very far from 
my intention. 

That God is good, (which his very 
name implies in our old Teutonic tongue,) 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 3 

is clearly deducible from the open page 
of creation in general, and from the physi- 
ology of the mind and body of man in 
particular, as well as from a thousand 
provisions of adaptation made for his exist- 
ence and comfort in the world he lives 
in, evidently showing him to have been 
the object of care and providence before 
creation. (*) God has also implanted in 
the human breast an intimate assurance 
of continued personal existence after the 
death of the body ; a belief by no means 
inefficient as a motive of action, common 
to every human tribe on the face of the 
earth, and found in no other order of the 
visible creation. Man, therefore, even 
had no special revelation ever been made 
to him, would, I conceive, in the first 
instance by the light of reason, in the 
second by intuition, come to the conclu- 
sion, that he is the creature of a God of 
beneficence, and that it is his destiny to 
survive the body, and the state of things 
in which he finds himself temporarily a 
sojourner. ( 2 ) 

b 2 



4 



THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



Yet looking around us, and into our 
own hearts, and comparing the condition 
of man with that of the various tribes of 
sentient creatures around him, each per- 
fect in its way, and fulfilling the ends of 
its being, we find him in a state evidently 
degraded, — moral evil (in other words, 
discordance with what our conscience 
testifies to be the divine will,) everywhere 
prevailing ; while in the moral govern- 
ment of the world, thus constituted, we 
discern dim but certain indications that 
justice, no less than goodness, is an attri- 
bute of the Deity, and awaken to the ap- 
prehension that the system of reward and 
punishment, which we observe already to 
prevail partially here below, may be 
carried to perfection, and find its comple- 
tion in that unknown state to which we 
feel that we are tending. — And if so, con- 
scious as we all are of guilt and ingrati- 
tude, what cause have we to tremble ! 

Yet, on the other hand, convinced that 
it was the original intention of God to 
make us happy, and observing that he 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 







appears still to keep that intention in view 
in spite of our degraded state and utter 
undesert — an impression arises, which in- 
voluntarily strengthens into hope and pre- 
sumption, that in his boundless resources 
of wisdom and power, he may find a 
means or medium of reconciling his justice 
and his goodness in the final accomplish- 
ment of that original intention. 

Still, our whole moral and physical 
being, our position here, our destiny here- 
after, the true relation of God to us, and 
of ourselves to God, and especially the 
ever-recurring uncertainty how, without 
sacrifice of an essential attribute of God, 
man can be just before his Maker — form 
altogether an enigma, so dark, so uncer- 
tain, so bewildering, and involving such 
fearful consequences of weal or woe 
through all futurity, that the cry of man 
to heaven has gone up in all ages, implor- 
ing its solution. 

That God has withheld such a solution 
is most improbable from the consideration 
above alluded to, that his merciful regard 



6 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 

is not wholly withdrawn from man, while 
that he has provided one is thus suggested 
with increased probability : and this im- 
pression, like the one it is founded upon, 
gradually strengthens into hope and pre- 
sumption, and naturally allies itself with 
it. 

And here let us pause a moment to 
reflect, that, since we cannot solve the 
enigma by our own unassisted reason, the 
truths revealed to us by God must neces- 
sarily be of a very exalted nature, and 
probably, in their full nature and bear- 
ings, above our comprehension, and must 
therefore be sanctioned by evidence so ex- 
traordinary as at once to convince us 
that they are oracles from the Deity ; 
these reflections, if duly naturalised in the 
mind, will engender in it that degree of 
faith, which a revelation from a superior 
power, when once it is proved to be such, 
rightfully claims from us. We must, in 
short, be prepared to hear, receive, and 
act upon, mysterious truths, " undreamt of 
in our philosophy." 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



7 



Does there then exist a communication 
from God to man, solving the enigma of 
human life, and affording a remedy for 
its sufferings, such as reason encourages 
us to look for at the hands of God ? 

There does exist a book, or rather a 
series of books, arranged together in one 
volume, and called collectively and em- 
phatically the bible, which professes to 
be the oracle we want. 

A strong argument may be drawn in 
its favour from its containing the only 
theological system which, in consistency 
with the character of God as deduced by 
natural religion, and with the deep-felt 
exigency of man, answers, as it were, to 
the above-mentioned presumption, that 
such a communication must exist. 

Still, this is not absolutely sufficient, 
and we require to be convinced, that the 
Bible is a direct communication from God 
himself. If this can be proved, our ac- 
ceptance of the truths revealed in it follows, 
or ought to follow, as a matter of course. ( 3 ) 



8 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



The Holy Scriptures (as the Bible is 
otherwise called) are divided into two 
distinct series, the books of the Old and 
New Testament. 

The canon of the Old Testament 
(thirty-nine books, exclusive of those 
styled Apocryphal) was fully established 
before the time of Josephus, the contem- 
porary of the fall of Jerusalem ; and the 
authenticity of the Pentateuch, or five 
books of Moses, the substruction on which 
the rest is built, was admitted by Por- 
phyry, one of the earliest and ablest oppo- 
nents of Christianity, who considered 
Moses to have lived before the Trojan 
war. ( 4 ) 

Of the divine origin of the Pentateuch 
a remarkable proof occurs in the specific 
prophecy of the ultimate dispersion of the 
Jews, and of their existence among all na- 
tions as a distinct people, commingling 
with none, but remaining in all "a re- 
proach and a curse," as they do to this 
day. The book of Deuteronomy, in 
which this prophecy occurs, was trans- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



9 



lated into Greek at Alexandria, above 
three hundred vears before the Jewish 
polity was overthrown. That the Jews 
do so exist at the present day is known to 
every one. The direct inference is, that 
the work in which such a superhuman 
foreknowledge is displayed must be 
divine. 

Similarly, through the remaining books 
of the Old Testament are scattered vari- 
ous prophecies respecting the fate of the 
Jews themselves, and of certain nations 
grouped around them, which at the time 
when these books were translated into 
Greek (to take the latest possible period) 
were in existence, and more or less 
flourishing, as is provable by profane his- 
tory. The exact fulfilment of these pre- 
dictions at the present day has been un- 
consciously borne testimony to by a host 
of travellers and historians ; some sceptical 
altogether, others intent merely on anti- 
quarian or geographical research. The 
inference, like that in favour of the Pen- 
tateuch, is irresistible. ( 5 ) 

b 5 



10 THE EVIDENCE AND THEORY 



The Old Testament, however, (and 
from this consideration an important argu- 
ment is deducibie, in support of the 
divinity of the New,) by no means professes 
to be a complete revelation of the will of 
God, or to establish an universal religion : 
on the contrary, to be merely the base- 
ment on which* at a future day, the per- 
fect temple of true religion is to be reared. 
Throughoutthe Pentateuch and the remain- 
ing books, constant allusions are made 
to the mediatorial intervention between 
God and man of a Deliverer, named the 
Messiah, in the description of whose 
person and character the most exalted 
and the humblest attributes are united. 
He is described in some places as " a Law- 
giver," as 66 Wonderful, the Counsellor, 
the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, 
the Prince of Peace ;" in others, as " a 
child," "a servant," as "despised and 
rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and 
acquainted with grief," as being " brought 
as a lamb to the slaughter," "stricken, 
smitten of God, and afflicted." And 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



II 



both characters are united in the following 
distinct prediction : "Thus saith Jehovah 
.... To him whose person is despised, 
whom the nation holds in abhorrence, to 
the subject of rulers, kings shall see him 
and rise up : princes, and they shall wor- 
ship him !" ( 6 ) But nowhere in the Old 
Testament do we read of this mysterious 
personage having actually come. On the 
contrary, at the close, as at the beginning, 
it still points to futurity as the period 
when the types and prophecies of which 
it is the record are to find their complete 
fulfilment in him. The Old Testament, 
therefore, this work of God, is confessedly 
imperfect. 

Here again reason steps in with the pre- 
sumption, that — as the just and good God 
cannot have been mocking us with expec- 
tations which are not to be realised, — as 
it would be against his nature to abandon 
capriciously an enterprise he has once un- 
dertaken, — as the period pointed to in the 
Old Testament as that of the Messiah's 
advent is (as will be shown hereafter) long 



12 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



past, — as no such personage is at present 
existing visibly on the earth, — as he must 
consequently have come and gone, — and 
as, therefore, competent testimony- is our 
only means of knowledge as to his charac- 
ter and history, and the duties incumbent 
on us in consequence of his intervention — 
we may, on all these considerations, fairly 
expect a conclusion to the work of which 
the first part is before us, equally originat- 
ing from God, analogous therefore to the 
former portion, though probably still 
more wondrous in its discoveries, and 
therefore attested in a yet more striking 
(though possibly dissimilar) manner. 

Hence, therefore, as before, but with a 
still surer expectation of an affirmative 
reply, results the question — is such a con- 
clusion extant? 

The New Testament is put into our 
hands as the answer. And, when we 
find on examination that it is entirely con- 
formable to the idea of such a conclusion 
as we are led to expect ; that the narra- 
tive harmonises in the minutest particulars 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



13 



with the preceding scriptures ; and, more- 
over, that if it be rejected, no other work 
whatever exists that can be assumed in its 
stead as answering to that idea — it is not 
irrational to suppose that in the New 
Testament we have the conclusion in 
question. 

However, here again we must examine 
more minutely into the claims of the New 
Testament to be received as this con- 
clusion. 

The New Testament consists of the 
Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles, and the 
Apocalypse, or Book of Revelations. The 
" Gospels," are, in other words, so many 
biographies of an individual Jew, by name 
Jesus Christ, who asserted himself to be 
the Son of God, and the predicted Messiah 
and Saviour of the world, worked miracles 
to confirm that assertion, was crucified by 
the Jews, but rose from the dead, and, 
after appearing repeatedly to his disciples, 
ascended to heaven, there to remain until 
he shall come again in glory, to reward 
his faithful followers, punish his enemies, 



14 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 

and assume universal empire. The 
" Acts" record the first establishment and 
diffusion of the religion revealed by Jesus 
Christ, commonly called Christianity. 
The " Epistles" are so many letters, writ- 
ten by his apostles, or missionary disciples, 
inculcating the precepts and doctrines of 
that religion. And the " Apocalypse" is 
a prophetic narrative of the fortunes of 
the christian church, and of the world in 
general, from the age of the apostles to the 
close of time. 

That these books are genuine, and that 
none which ever belonged to the canon of 
the New Testament have been lost, is 
proved by an uninterrupted series of quo- 
tations from them, by writers for and 
against Christianity, from the present 
time backwards to the very days in which 
the authors lived. Every one of the said 
quotations occurs in the New Testament 
as at present in our hands, and none are 
made which are not found therein. Add 
to this, the correspondence of all the most 
ancient manuscripts and of the oldest 
versions. 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 



15 



With respect to the authenticity and 
credibility of the Gospel narrative : — We 
are accustomed to acquiesce in the exist- 
ence, and give credit to the character and 
legislation of Lycurgus and Solon, yet no 
contemporary accounts exist of them. 
Whereas, the existence, character, and 
legislation of the christian lawgiver are 
directly attested by four independent con- 
temporary witnesses, and indirectly by 
several others, all minutely agreeing. 

That the authors of these Gospels (and 
the argument, with slight alteration, may 
be applied to the rest of the New Testa- 
ment) were Jews, is clear from the 
Hebraisms with which their Greek 
abounds ; that they wrote with a perfect 
knowledge of the facts they relate, is 
evident from their circumstantiality, their 
undesigned coincidences, and the minute 
agreement of their geographical and 
historical allusions with the accounts of 
contemporary historians ; that they were 
sincere is indubitable from the sufferings 
they underwent, and the sacrifices that 



16 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



they made, in the cause of what they 
believed to be truth ; that what they told 
was truth in all respects, even the most 
miraculous, is to he presumed from the un- 
paralleled candour and honesty with which 
they record their own failings, and from 
their moral character never having been 
impeached by their keenest opponents, and 
may be considered established by the facts, 
that the witnesses of the miracles asserted 
were alive at the time they published their 
works, and that the bitterest enemies of 
Christianity admitted the reality of these 
miracles; and also by the evident incom- 
petency of any one of them to invent the 
character of the individual whose life they 
chronicle, a character which has been ac- 
knowledged by sceptics and infidels to be the 
most sublime and beautiful ever exhibited 
amoug mankind. On the contrary, not 
one of the evangelists has fully appreciated 
that character, its perfect compass, har- 
mony, and unity, being apparently beyond 
the single apprehension of any one of 
them. It is not therefore from one, but 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



17 



from collation of the four Gospels, and 
indeed of the whole New Testament, that 
we are enabled to deduce the character of 
Jesus Christ. ( 7 ) 

And the style in which the narrative is 
delivered is a strong corroborative argu- 
ment. Throughout the Old Testament, 
as long as the notes of preparation had to 
be sounded, the utmost beauty of lan- 
guage, the highest flights and flourishes 
of poetry, were employed to do honour to 
the approach of the Deliverer. But when 
he appears on the scene, all is hushed 
before the majesty of his presence : except 
when used by our Saviour himself, not a 
trope or metaphor is to be found in the 
Gospels ; there is no poetical embellish- 
ment, no attempt to w r ork on the passions, 
no specific character is even draw 7 n of 
him : awe-stricken, and conscious that 
human speech falls far short of their high 
argument, the evangelists give a plain, 
simple, matter-of-fact statement of what 
they have seen and heard, and leave the 
reader to draw his own conclusion. 



18 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 

And what is this conclusion ? The pro- 
phecies, scattered throughout the Old Testa- 
ment, meet in Jesus Christ, as a suffering 
Messiah, (for as a triumphant one he has 
yet to come,) with the most accurate fulfil- 
ment, not only in his personal character, 
but in the most minute particulars relative 
to his life and sufferings ; while the 
miracles recorded of him (which rest on 
stronger testimony, positive and presump- 
tive, than perhaps any other facts in 
history,) can only be accounted for on the 
supposition of his divinity — a divinity 
which, be it remarked, we are prepared 
to acknowledge by the express predictions 
of the Old Testament. And, even if 
all this body of evidence were wanting, 
his own specific and circumstantial pro- 
phecy (to cite one only) regarding the 
approaching destruction of Jerusalem — - 
(which was published in three of the four 
Gospels, several years before that event 
took place, and of the prior publicity of 
which the evidence was so strong that 
it was unchallenged by Julian, by Por- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. , 



19 



phyry, and by Celsus,) is proof incontes- 
table of the foreknowledge of the being 
who uttered it, and therefore of his 
divinity. For it must be remarked, that 
Christ's predictions and injunctions are 
never prefaced by " Thus saiththe Lord," 
as in the Old Testament, but he speaks 
with the absolute authority and affirmation 
of God. 

Yet, in recognising the divinity of 
Christ, we must by no means lose sight 
of his humanity. One of the most striking 
peculiarities of the Gospels is the fearless 
and artless manner in which the evange- 
lists attribute to him, almost in the same 
breath, the actions and language of the 
man and those of the Deity ; language 
and actions which can be explained only 
on the admission of the great truth on 
which the whole Bible and the salvation 
of man hinges, that Jesus Christ was God 
incarnate. 

The very existence and prevalence? 
moreover, of Christianity cannot be 
accounted for on rational principles, unless 



20 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



by its celestial origin. The false religions 
that it had to contend against in the east 
and west, and in later ages in the north, 
had prevailed through their pandering 
either to the sensuality or the pride of 
man ; and in occupation of these his 
master-passions they were thus, so far as 
human agency is concerned, omnipotent. 
But that a system so diametrically op- 
posed to the natural bias of human nature 
as Christianity should have obtained the 
footing it did, and has ever since main- 
tained, is incomprehensible, unless it ori- 
ginated from the Deity. 

Nor, under the conviction that God is 
good, should the peculiar tendency cf 
Christianity to promote the happiness of 
mankind, public and private, as demon- 
strable from the records of history and 
the common experience of life, be over- 
looked as evidence in this matter. 

Much more might be urged on this 
subject; but I think the above will be 
deemed sufficient to establish the divine 
origin of the Scriptures. ( 8 ) 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



21 



The next and most important question 
is, — that origin being admitted, — what is 
their proper object and purpose ? 

Not, I apprehend, to announce to us 
the existence of God, or the destiny of 
man to survive his present state of exis- 
tence, — for these ideas may be considered 
innate in the human mind, or else, so 
universally true and congenial to his 
nature, that, having once at the creation 
been imparted to him, it is morally im- 
possible for him ever, under any circum- 
stances, (I speak of him here collectively, 
not individually,) wholly to lose sight of 
them. No race of human beings, I be- 
lieve, has been ever met with, however 
degraded, whose creed did not at least 
embrace these two tenets. They lie, too, 
at the very foundation of natural religion, 
and may be deduced by reason from the 
mere study of a daisy or a caterpillar. 
Though on various occasions specifically 
asserted, I consider them, therefore, to 
be taken for granted throughout the 
sacred writings. 



22 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



The specific object, then, of the Bible 
is, first, to republish authoritatively, and 
confirm, as it were, with the hand and 
seal of God, those truths respecting his 
character, his moral government of the 
world, and the destiny of man to a future 
life, which we include under the name 
of natural religion, and which, fallen and 
guilty as we are, leave us in a state of 
painful uncertainty, bordering alternately 
on hope and despair, as to our future 
happiness or misery; secondly, to ac- 
count for our present wretchedness by 
announcing the lofty dignity from which 
we have fallen, and to reveal a mode of 
reinstatement in our original privileges 
mercifully provided for us by God, in 
which new and mysterious properties of 
the Divine Being are disclosed, and the 
duties consequently incumbent on us 
pointed out and enforced ; and thirdly, 
to set before us such incentives of present 
comfort and future happiness as may in- 
duce us to close with the invitation thus 
held out to us. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



23 



Yet it must be premised that the Scrip- 
tures are not to be considered as a reve- 
lation of the whole grand scheme of the 
divine government of man, as already 
partially displayed to superior intelli- 
gences on the wide theatre of the material 
universe, and far less as it exists in the 
infinite mind of God ; but only of such 
portions of it as it is necessary for his sal- 
vation to know here on earth, and of cer- 
tain individual points which, like stars 
on the distant horizon, are just within 
his apprehension, though far beyond his 
comprehension. These latter mysteries 
are partially divulged as a trial for his 
faith, fuller knowledge being reserved for 
futurity. ( 9 ) 

Nor must he be discouraged at finding 
this revelation not merely a partial, but 
(so to speak) an unscientific one, scattered 
over the whole Bible, " here a little, and 
there a little," without systematic ar- 
rangement, and in a form and manner 
intended, doubtless, as in the analogous 
book of nature, to interest and exercise 



24 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



his inquisitive and critical faculties, and 
thus secure his attachment to the science 
of theology, at the same time that his 
mind is at once elevated by the contem- 
plation of the great truths revealed by it, 
and humbled by that of the vast chasms 
of ignorance into whose recesses his vision 
is as yet too weak to penetrate. To the 
theological, indeed, far more than the 
student of natural science, is the dying 
ejaculation of Sir Isaac Newton appro- 
priate ; " I feel as if I had been standing 
all my life, a little child, on the shore of 
the boundless ocean of truth, picking up 
a few shells !" ( l0 ) 

From the Bible, then, we learn, first, that 
Goodness, Holiness, Justice, and Truth, 
are absolute and inalienable attributes of 
God ; that " in Him there is no variable- 
ness, neither shadow of turning;" and 
that,. therefore, these attributes can in no 
wise clash with each other, nor can any 
one of them, so to speak, be suspended 
in favour of the others, — but that they 
are ever in full, unrelaxable exercise. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



25 



Further, we learn the triune nature of 
the Godhead,— that a Trinity in Unit}' 
and Unity in Trinity is to be worshipped, 
consisting of God the Father, represented 
as the Originator of all things ; God the 
Son, by whose agency the worlds were 
made, and mankind created and redeem- 
ed ; and God the Holy Spirit, proceeding 
from the Father and the Son, who is 
represented as the Giver of life, the Dis- 
penser to man of those spiritual gifts 
which the Son has purchased for him of 
the Father by his obedience and atone- 
ment. This doctrine (which is of the 
utmost importance to the harmony of the 
whole system of Christianity) pervades 
the Bible from the beginning to the end. 
To enumerate and classify all the pas- 
sages which illustrate it (many of which 
are not perceptible in the English transla- 
tion) would fill a volume. I will only 
here remark, that the doctrine of at least 
a plurality of persons, and an unity of es- 
sence, is conveyed in the very first verse 
of Genesis; u In the beginning, God 

c 



26 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



created the heavens and the earth." The 
word translated " God" in our version is 
" Elohim " " Gods "the plural of" Eloh," 
(the same word as the modern Arabic 
Allah,) — but the verb " created'' is, in 
the Hebrew, in the singular number. ( n ) 
The name Jehovah, commonly translated 
" the Lord," and understood of the second 
Person of the Trinity, the Son and Word 
of God, is not used till the narrative of 
the creation is finished. I may add, that 
a tradition of the doctrine of the Trinity 
(which could only have been derived 
from primitive revelation) seems to have 
existed among all the early nations, and 
especially among the Egyptians, (the 
earliest established polity of the postdi- 
luvian world, of which we possess any 
accurate knowledge,) whose whole the- 
ogony was arranged in triads. ( 12 ) But 
this was polytheism. 

We also learn from the Bible that at 
some remote period an apostasy took 
place among the immortal host, in con- 
sequence of which the rebel spirits were 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



27 



cast out from heaven ; and that they and 
their leader, emphatically surnamed 
" Satan," or " the enemy," are unceasing 
in their efforts to contravene the benefi- 
cent intentions of God. Man, therefore, 
as his favoured creature, is especially the 
object of their malevolence. 

Immediately after the description of 
the material and brute creation, we are 
informed that God created man " in his 
own image," pure and spotless, 

" Sufficient to have stood, yet free to fall." 

He appointed him a residence and an 
employment in his service, as occupant 
and gardener of Eden ; a spot so mo- 
delled, there is reason to suppose, as to 
resemble heaven; " a place chosen, " as 
it has been beautifully expressed, " like 
the temple under the Law, and the 
Church under the Gospel, for the resi- 
dence of God with man ; a place de- 
signed to represent and furnish its happy 
tenants with ideas of heavenly things ; a 
place sacred to contemplation and devo- 

c 2 



28 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



tion ; — in one word, the primitive temple 
and church, formed and consecrated for 
the use of man in his state of innocence. 
There, undisturbed by care, and as yet 
unassailed by temptation, all his faculties 
perfect, and his appetites in subjection, 
he walked with God as a man walketh 
with his friend, and enjoyed communion 
with heaven, though his abode was upon 
earth. He studied the works of God, as 
they came fresh from the hands of the 
Work-master, and in the creation, as in 
a glass, he was taught to behold the 
glories of the Creator. Trained in the 
school of Eden, by the material elements 
of a visible world, to the knowledge of 
one that is immaterial and invisible, he 
found himself excited by the beauty of 
the picture to aspire after the transcend- 
ent excellence of the divine original." ( 1S ) 
Such was paradise ; a state of happiness 
unmingled. But it was held on one con- 
dition, as a test of man's obedience, — 
that he should not eat of the fruit of a 
certain tree which grew in the garden, — - 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



29 



the penalty of transgression being death. 
It was not unjust that the holy and good 
Creator should demand perfect obedience 
from a creature whom He had formed 
competent to render that obedience. 
Adam, however, did eat of the tree, at 
the instigation of Eve, his wife, who had 
been beguiled by Satan, under the form 
of a serpent, as here by implication, and 
elsewhere expressly, affirmed. Having 
eaten, they became conscious of good and 
evil, but in a very different manner from 
what they expected ; the propensity to 
moral evil, latent in their constitution, 
became developed, and the taint of cor- 
ruption has descended from them to their 
whole posterity. Subjection to temporal 
death followed as a matter of course. 
But this was not all ; the wrath of God, 
or eternal death, became their due in 
consequence of their disobedience ; and 
the holiness, justice, and truth of God 
were, in apparent league against his 
goodness, pledged for its infliction. 

Expulsion from Eden, condemnation 



30 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



to earn their bread by the sweat of their 
brow, temporal death, and, last and 
worst, eternal death, may appear at first 
sight a harsh punishment for what may 
similarly appear a slight offence. But 
the fact is, (and this has been well put 
by Dr. Hales, the chronologer,) situated 
as Adam and Eve were, in their primitive 
state of innocence and seclusion from 
society, what opportunity or what tempt- 
ation had they to violate the Law of God 
in any one of those principles familiar to 
us, since the republication of that Law 
to the Israelites, as the Ten Command- 
ments ? 66 No other God than one knew 
they, their Creator, and therefore they 
had no inducement to polytheism, ido- 
latry, or profanation of his name or sab- 
baths; no earthly parents had they to 
dishonour, no neighbours to injure by 
murder, adultery, theft, or perjury ; where 
all was their sole property and dominion, 
no room had they for covetousness. No- 
thing, therefore, but the privation of some 
appetite, the restriction of some gratifica- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



31 



tion within their reach, could easily have 
been proposed as a test of their obedi- 
ence." ( u ) Their condemnation therefore 
was just. 

Corroborative proofs of this history of 
the fall, in its outline and details, under- 
stood as plain literal matters of fact, exist 
in the traditions of a golden age, and of 
the degeneracy of man, common to almost 
all nations ; in the Ophite worship, or 
adoration of malignant deities incarnate 
in the serpent form, almost universal over 
the globe ; in the obscure expectation, pre- 
served in the Hindoo, Grecian, and Scan- 
dinavian mythologies, of a divine avenger, 
destined to deliver man by slaying the 
serpent; in the degraded and reptile state 
of the serpent tribe ; in the disgust and 
almost instinctive abhorrence with which 
mankind in general regard it ; in the 
necessity incumbent on man alone, the 
lord of creation, to labour for his bread ; 
in the suffering attendant on the parturi- 
tion of woman, unshared by the brute 
creation ; and in that sensibility to shame 



32 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



on account of nakedness which all man- 
kind have shared in since that memorable 
evening when Adam and Eve, being 
" ashamed, because they knew that they 
were naked," " sewed fig-leaves together, 
and made themselves aprons." ( 15 ) 

Adam and Eve, then, were driven out 
of paradise, and death was recorded 
against them. But they were not driven 
out without a hope of pardon and rein- 
statement in their high privileges. Pan- 
dora had opened the fatal box, but Hope 
remained behind, — a tradition evidently 
allusive to this early transaction in the 
history of mankind. God's goodness had 
devised a mode of reconciling man to 
himself, without compromise to his equally 
essential attributes of holiness, truth, and 
justice. He vouchsafed a promise to the 
unhappy pair, that " the seed of the 
woman" (her offspring) " should bruise 
the serpent's head." This promise was, 
in fact, primarily directed as a threat to 
Satan, whose malevolence thus providen- 
tially recoiled on himself. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



33 



That Adam and Eve expected the 
speedy fulfilment of this promise is pro- 
bable from the exclamation recorded of 
Eve on the birth of her first-born, Cain, 
" I have gotten the man," (in our trans- 
lation, a man,) " from the Lord." But 
the manifestation of the promised " seed " 
was to be long delayed. And till he 
should arrive, God appointed sacrifice to 
be offered, that through the death of an 
innocent victim, as a type or figure of the 
great atonement to be made by the spot- 
less " Lamb of God," thus " slain for us 
from the beginning of the world," man 
might be reconciled to his Maker by 
prospective faith in that atonement. And 
sacrifice, though coupled with utter ob- 
livion of its figurative meaning, has con- 
sequently been found to prevail in every 
country and among every people of the 
world. 

That sacrifice was instituted before the 
expulsion of the offending pair from para- 
dise, and immediately subsequent to the 
sentence pronounced on them by God, 

c 5 



34 THE EVIDENCES AKD THEORY 



is deduced with strong probability from 
the consideration, that as the permission 
to use animal food was not granted till 
after the flood, and as the Lord clothed 
them with skins before expelling them, 
those skins must have been the skins of 
animals which they had offered up in 
sacrifice. At all events, we find sacrifice 
for sin clearly established a few yesrs 
afterwards. The distinction between Cain's 
offering and that of Abel, which rendered 
the one acceptable and the other dis- 
tasteful in the sight of God, was, that 
Abel, in offering a lamb, acknowledged 
his sinfulness and faith in the promised 
atonement ; while Cain, in only offering 
the fruits of the earth, negatively af- 
firmed his sinlessness and independence 
of that atonement. The religion of the 
one was (by anticipation) Christianity ; 
that of the other Deism, or mere natural 
religion, by which man cannot be saved. 
This view is confirmed by the expression 
of Cain, " My sin is too great to be for- 
given," (as the passage translated, " My 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



35 



punishment is greater than I can bear," 
may be also rendered) ( l6 )— a sullen re- 
jection of the salvation provided by God ; 
for his sin, though heinous, was by no 
means too great to be forgiven, and grace 
(unless, indeed, his heart had been judi- 
cially hardened) still lay open to him on 
recourse to the means recommended to 
him by the Almighty in his merciful 
expostulation previous to the murder, 
u If thou doest not well, sin (i. e. 6 a sin- 
offering ') lieth (more literally ' coucheth') 
at the door," But obdurate pride seems 
to have been his ruin. ( 1? ) 

The history of the antediluvian w r orlcl 
is very briefly told. We are not, however, 
without a specific testimony to immor- 
tality, in the translation of the patriarch 
Enoch alive to heaven. In spite of this, 
however, and the preaching of Noah for 
one hundred and twenty years, the world 
became so corrupt, that God determined 
to destroy it, which He did by a deluge, 
preserving Noah and his family, the 
solitary believers left, in an ark, or ship, 



36 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



for the purpose of repeopling the earth. 
By Noah's three sons, Japhet, (the Iapetus 
of the Greeks, and their and our an- 
cestor,) Shem and Ham, and their wives, 
the earth was accordingly repeopled. 

That the flood actually occurred, sci- 
entific proof exists in the discoveries of 
geology ; that it occurred in punishment 
of human wickedness, and that Noah and 
his family were preserved in the ark, is 
corroborated in the strongest manner by 
the traditions of all nations, some of 
which (as those preserved by Lucian, 
Plutarch, Ovid, those of the Celts, of the 
Babylonians, of the Persians, Hindoos, 
Chinese, Mexicans, the Sandwich Islan- 
ders, &c.) very closely approximate to 
the Mosaic account ; — and that the whole 
existing human race are descended from 
Noah's three sons, as asserted in Scrip- 
ture, is supported by the etymological 
and geographical facts, that the known 
languages naturally fall into three great 
classes, the African or Ham-ite, the 
Shem-itic, and the Indo-European, or 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



37 



Japhet-an, — each class being distinct from 
the other, though there are many parti- 
cular words in each which are common 
to one of the other two, and sometimes 
to all three, proving their common origin ; 
— and that the only central point from 
which these three great divisions of the 
human race could have emigrated, with- 
out crossing and thwarting each other's 
courses, is that very district of Asia to 
which the Scriptures point as the resi- 
dence of the patriarch, their ancestor, 
after the deluge. To which may be 
added, the argument derived from the 
prevalence of the arbitrary and unastro- 
nomical division of time into weeks, and 
of the reverence paid to the seventh day , 
among nations belonging to each of these 
three great stocks, — nations so remote 
from each other (that of Pegu, for in- 
stance, from Guinea) as to preclude all 
rational probability of their having inter- 
communicated since the departure of their 
respective ancestors eastward and west- 
ward from the plain of Shinar. ( 18 ) 



38 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 

The worship of the true God was pre- 
served by the descendants of Noah for 
many ages in the several countries where 
they settled. Of this patriarchal religion, 
as it existed in its purity, we have a 
beautiful example in the book of Job. 
That this book was composed long before 
the time of Moses, or even Abraham, is 
presumed from the fact of its containing 
no allusion (otherwise so apposite) to the 
plagues of Egypt and the passage of the 
Red Sea under Moses, or to the destruc- 
tion of Sodom and Gomorrah in the time 
of Abraham ; from no notice occurring 
in it of any description of idolatry except 
the Zabian worship of the heavenly host, 
whereas in Egypt (which the author was 
evidently acquainted with) image-worship 
existed before the time of Abraham, as 
proved by the modern discoveries there ; 
from the specification of Taurus and 
Scorpio, as the cardinal constellations of 
spring and autumn, which, by the calcu- 
lation backward of the precession of the 
equinoxes, fixes its date to b. c. 23.37; 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



39 



and from the age attained by Job himself, 
which was greater than that which man- 
kind usually reached in the time of Abra- 
ham. ( 19 ) — I should have remarked be- 
fore, that the gradual diminution of hu- 
man life, subsequent to the fall, was 
remembered in tradition ages afterwards ; 

" Post ignem aetheria donio 
Subductam, macies ac nova febrium 

Terris incubuit coliors ; 
Semotique prius tarda necessitas 

Letbi corripuit gradum. 5 ' 

That this patriarchal religion was (like 
that of Adam and Noah) anticipatively 
Christianity, is clear from Job's celebrated 
profession of faith : " I know that my 
Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand 
at the latter day upon the earth ; and 
though after my skin worms destroy this 
bodv, vet in my flesh shall I see God." 
Here the resurrection of the body is ex- 
pressly affirmed. But the passage is re- 
markable on another account. Job speaks 
of his Redeemer as living, and yet at the 



40 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



close of his trial sacrifice was offered, — a 
proof that the seed of the woman had not 
then come ; a proof too — may it not be 
strongly argued? — that that Redeemer, 
when he actually appeared, was no mere 
man, but an incarnation of the Deity. 

A remarkable and interesting inference 
may also be drawn from the fact, that 
" the Lord gave Job," after his trial, 
" twice as much as he had before," (or, 
literally in the original, as translated in 
the margin of the Bible, " added all that 
had been to Job unto the double,") to 
wit, fourteen thousand sheep, instead of 
the seven thousand he had lost, six thou- 
sand camels for three thousand, " and a 
thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand 
she-asses," in the same proportion. " He 
had also seven sons and three daughters." 
The question is natural, Why were not 
his children doubled too ? And the 
answer, on reflection, is obvious — Be- 
cause those he had been deprived of were 
u not lost, but gone before though 
parted from him in this, they existed to 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



41 



him, awaiting his arrival, in another 
world. ( 20 ) 

Though Abraham himself appears to 
have been born an idolater, true religion 
was not extinct in his days, nor indeed 
for long after him. Melchizedek, king 
of Salem, his contemporary, was 6 4 the 
priest of the most high God," to whom 
he " gave tithes of all," ( 2l ) and Balaam, 
the Chaldean prophet, in the time of 
Moses, though a wicked man, professed 
to worship the true God. But the glim- 
merings of the truth were fast fading 
away and being replaced by the darkness 
of paganism, when God called Abraham, 
and re-established with him, and with 
his son and grandson, Isaac and Jacob, 
successively, that direct covenant which 
he had previously entered into with Noah 
and Adam before them, and which ex- 
isted between God and the posterity of 
Israel till the advent of Jesus Christ, and 
has existed ever since with Christians, as 
the spiritual Israel, to this day. 

The object of God in thus selecting the 



42 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



descendants of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the 
son of Abraham, and forming them into 
a distinct nation and body politic, (to the 
exclusion of the Edomites, Ishmaelites, 
Midianites, and other tribes, descended 
from the respective brothers of these pa- 
triarchs,) was to narrow, visibly and by 
degrees, to one family of mankind the 
promise of their future Deliverer, and 
meanwhile to secure, amid the corruption 
of the world, the preservation of the 
true religion among that one people by 
his personal manifestation to them in 
signs and wonders, and by fencing them 
in by every possible repulsive means 
from contamination through foreign ad- 
mixture. 

The history of Joseph is well known, and 
the manner in which (according to pro- 
phecy) the family of Israel were brought 
into Egypt. Shortly before their arrival 
(acording to the most approved chrono- 
logical calculations) the Egyptians had 
succeeded in expelling the shepherd 
kings, a nomade race of Scythian origin, 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



43 



who had oppressed them for some hun- 
dred years. This accounts for the inci- 
dental assertion of Moses, that every 
shepherd was " an abomination to the 
Egyptians;" and this prejudice continued 
for ages afterwards, as depicted in the 
bas-reliefs and paintings still to be seen 
in Egypt. The district of Goshen, which, 
according to the Bible, w r as assigned to 
the Israelites, was, we know from profane 
history, that from which these Scythian 
invaders had been expelled ; and was 
therefore in all probability lying vacant 
at the moment of their arrival. The 
pastoral Israelites were thus, by God's 
providence, preserved a distinct tribe 
among the idolatrous Egyptians, with 
whom, in the natural course of things, 
they would otherwise have mixed by in- 
termarriage and been lost. ( 22 ) In pro- 
cess of time they multiplied, and were 
grievously oppressed. God then inter- 
posed, and enabled Moses to perform a 
succession of miracles which convinced 
both the Egyptians and his own country- 



44 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



men (the most sceptical nation, appa- 
rently, that ever existed) that he was 
indeed an accredited messenger of the 
Deity, and which ultimately induced 
Pharaoh to permit the departure of the 
Israelites. The evening before his con- 
sent was obtained, the Passover was in- 
stituted, a solemn sacrifice and feast, com- 
memorative of the destroying angel passing 
over the houses of those who observed 
it that terrible night, while every house 
that neglected it was visited by death ; 
and prejigurative also of the great future 
sacrifice of the " Lamb of God," by which 
those who accept its proffered benefits 
are spared and saved. The Passover was 
appointed to be kept year after year until 
that sacrifice should be consummated. 
The Lord's Supper is the Christian's 
substitute for it, as appointed by our 
Saviour the night before he was cruci- 
fied : " Do this in remembrance of me." 
And the continuous commemoration, even 
to the present day, of these two ordi- 
nances (and as much might be said of 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



45 



the similar antitypes, Circumcision and 
Baptism) among Jews and Christians 
throughout the world, is a proof of the 
credibility of the Scripture narrative, 
no less remarkable than those already 
cited. 

After their miraculous passage of the 
Red Sea, (of which traditions lingered 
among the inhabitants of Memphis and 
Heliopolis as late as the second century,) 
the Israelites were led through the wil- 
derness to Mount Sinai, where they re- 
ceived from God the ten commandments 
embodying the moral law, (under which 
man was created, and which is conse- 
quently still binding upon him,) and the 
ceremonial — a politico-religious system, 
typical, in all its minutia3, of Christ and 
Christianity, ( 23 ) and which was super- 
seded by our Saviour. This system, as 
enunciated in the five books of Moses, 
the Israelites accepted ; they retained it 
till the destruction of their polity, and 
still tenaciously cling to and observe it 
to the utmost of their power during their 



46 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



dispersion, — facts from which, taken in 
connexion with its extreme severity, re- 
suits an argument of overwhelming force 
as to the reality of the miracles on which 
that system is based, since it is clear that 
no generation of Jews, except the one 
which witnessed the miracles, could have 
been the first to acknowledge its divine 
authority. At least, the maintenance of 
the contrary opinion involves the suppo- 
sition, that a book asserting that the 
British people had been captives in 
France, had been miraculously brought 
through the sea to England five centuries 
ago, and have ever since been in the 
habit of going once a year to London to 
celebrate a great national feast, instituted 
in remembrance of their escape, could 
obtain credence in the present day, in 
the face of popular knowledge and expe- 
rience to the contrary of such assertions 
—especially when they are brought for- 
ward as the basement of a code of laws 
and observances opposed to the natural 
tendencies of fallen man, but which he 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



47 



is required, on the authority of the mira- 
culous event thus appealed to, to receive 
and obey under penalty of death — a ma- 
nifest absurdity. And this argument, it is 
obvious, might equally be applied in the 
case of the miracles recorded in the New 
Testament. ( 24 ) 

After being detained by God for forty 
years wandering in the desert, the Israel- 
ites crossed the Jordan, its waters being 
miraculously divided for their passage, ( 25 ) 
occupied the land of Canaan, and dwelt 
there for many centuries, frequently fall- 
ing into idolatry and every description 
of sin, (for which a large portion of 
them, ten tribes, were eventually carried 
into captivity beyond the Euphrates, and 
have ever since been lost to our recog- 
nition on the map of the world ;) but a 
remnant (the tribes of Judah and Benja- 
min) still preserved for the great purpose 
God had in view in his original adoption 
of the nation. 

As respects the doctrine of immortality, 
(which I have already mentioned as to 



48 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



my apprehension assumed for granted 
throughout the Old Testament,) various 
direct and indirect evidences of its being: 
the belief of the Jews during this interval, 
are scattered throughout the later books. 
Of these the strongest is the translation 
of the prophet Elijah, a case similar to 
that of the antediluvian Enoch. Nor can 
we otherwise account for the comfort de- 
rived by David, on hearing of the death 
of his child, from the reflection, " I shall 
go to him, but he shall not return to 
me," — an expression analogous to that so 
repeatedly used by Moses in describing 
the deaths of the early patriarchs, " He 
was gathered to his people," — words 
which, in their application alike to Abra- 
ham, to Israel, and to Moses, whose 
mortal remains await the resurrection of 
the just at intervals so widely apart, of 
themselves imply immortality. Indeed, 
the very existence of the Sadducees, as a 
sect of the Jews, proves the national 
belief in the doctrine. And if we wish 
further testimony, we have it from that 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



49 



" cloud of witnesses" of all ages, enume- 
rated by St. Paul, who having " died 
in faith, not having received the pro- 
mises, but having seen them afar off, and 
embraced them, and confessed that they 
were strangers and pilgrims on the 
earth," now look down from the " ever- 
lasting hills," the amphitheatre of heaven, 
on the arena of Christianity, where their 
spiritual descendants, animated with the 
same zeal, and winged with the same 
hope, " run with patience the race that 
is set before them, looking" (as they did) 
" unto Jesus, the author and finisher of 
their faith' 5 — the merciful Judge, who, 
not for one alone, but for each sincere 
aspirant for the goal, holds forth the 
palm of victory, the crown of everlasting 
life. ( 26 ) 

The future human birth of the " seed 
of the woman," the " Redeemer," who 
had been " living" in Job's time, having 
been successively limited to the race of 
Abraham, (I might have mentioned Seth 
and Shem before him,) Isaac, Jacob, and 

D 



50 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 

Judah, was last of all promised to that 
of David. Various prophecies were ut- 
tered concerning him, both as respected 
his human and divine nature, the place 
of his birth, minute incidents of his life 
and death, &c, growing clearer and 
clearer as the time for his manifestation 
drew nigh. ( 27 ) A specific note of time 
had long before been given in the death- 
bed prophecy of Jacob, " The sceptre" 
(or civil government) " shall not depart 
from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between 
his feet/' (i. e. of his offspring,) " until 
Shiloh" (the apostle) " come, and unto 
him shall the gathering of the people 
be." A passage which may be more cri- 
tically translated, — 

" The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, 
Nor a teacher from between his feet, 

Until Shiloh come, 

And [until] to him a congregation of peoples/ 5 

Of which, (the first and third lines, and 
the second and fourth corresponding, ac- 
cording to the usual alternation in He- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



51 



brew poetry) the meaning may be para- 
phrased as implying the existence of the 
civil government of Judah until Shiloh 
came, and the duration of its ecclesias- 
tical polity till a " congregation of 
peoples/' or a multitude of individuals of 
all nations, should have been gathered to 
him as believers. ( 28 ) Meanwhile, the 
daily sacrifice, and the great atonement 
on the day of the passover, continued 
uninterruptedly year after year, century 
after century. 

At last the appointed time arrived, and 
all things in God's providence conspired 
in ushering it in. The old mythologies 
of Egypt and Etruria, of Greece and 
Rome, had sunk into decrepitude ; the 
idol gods tottered on their pedestals, the 
temple of the universe stood vacant, as 
it were, without a deity. Rome, the last 
of the universal monarchies, had already 
cast her gigantic shadow across the earth ; 
the Greek language, the richest and most 
flexible that ever existed, had long been 

d 2 



52 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



silently diffusing itself over the civilised 
globe ; the nations were at peace — 

" No war or battle's sound 
Was heard the world around, 
The idle spear and sword were high up-hung ; 
The hooked chariot stood 
Unstained with hostile blood, 
The trumpet spoke not to the armed throng ; 
And kings sat still with awful eye, 
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by." 

— This is no mere figure of poetry. From 
whatever source it may have arisen, a 
strange and thrilling expectation of the 
advent of a mighty personage who should 
assume universal empire, and be a bless- 
ing to the human race, actually possessed 
the minds of men. And well indeed 
might a secret awe pervade creation, 
animate and inanimate ! The sacrifice 
prefigured by a spotless lamb ever since 
the last evening that Adam and Eve 
spent in paradise, this grand and most 
mysterious propitiatory sacrifice was to 
to be offered up for the sin of mankind. 
The mere offering of sacrifices was an 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



53 



acknowledgment that man, corrupt and 
impure from the womb, could make no 
such atonement. Yet the blood of bulls 
and of goats could not, we are assured, 
cleanse sin, It was necessary, therefore, 
(if we may use the expression,) that God 
should interpose— as indeed he had pro- 
mised to do. 

God accordingly did interpose. And 
as each Person of the Trinity had origi- 
nally engaged in the creation of man, so 
each Person re-engaged in this inter- 
position for his restoration. At the 
will of God the Father, and through 
the mysterious operation of God the 
Holy Ghost, God the Son became in- 
carnate as the promised " seed of the 
woman," was immaculately conceived, and 
born as Jesus Christ, the child of the 
blessed Virgin Mary. In Him, alone of 
all the human race descended from 
Adam, there was no taint of original sin, 
no inherited corruption. ( 29 ) 

It is a matter of profane history, that 
eleven years after the birth of our Sa- 



54 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



viour, Judaea was made a Roman pro- 
vince, was thenceforward governed by a 
Roman deputy, and that the judicial 
power of life and death was taken away 
from the Jews. " The sceptre had de- 
parted from Judah." Consequently, ac- 
cording to the prophecy of Jacob, Shiloh 
must have already come. But the Jews, 
overlooking the prophecies respecting a 
suffering Messiah for those which foretell 
his future glory, wilfully shut their eyes 
to the divinity of Him who was among 
them. 

The history of Jesus Christ is familiar 
to all, and his spotless and beautiful cha- 
racter has extorted the admiration of those 
who disbelieved his divinity, and have 
thus made him a " liar" and an impos- 
tor, since it is morally impossible to deny 
the testimony to the fact, that he as- 
serted himself to be the Son of God. ( 30 ) 

He commenced his public ministry as 
the " prophet,' 1 or teacher of righteous- 
ness, about the age of thirty; and for 
three years and a half unceasingly dis- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



55 



played his perfections and his miraculous 
powers. He was at last betrayed by one 
of his own disciples, and condemned at 
the instigation of the Jews (for, " the 
sceptre" having " departed," they could 
not themselves condemn him) to the 
most ignominious of all deaths, that as- 
signed to the vilest criminals, crucifixion. 
He was accordingly crucified. The Jews 
were not aware of the significancy of 
what they did, but he expired on the 
very day and at the very hour that the 
paschal lamb was appointed to be slain, 
— on the day of the Passover, and " at 
the ninth hour," or " between the even- 
ings," as the original ordinance is ex- 
pressed in the Hebrew of Moses, which 
Josephus explains, in treating of that 

feast, by the words, 66 airo rr)Q evvarriq wprjg 

tug evSeKarrig" " from the ninth until the 
eleventh hour." 

Christ thus, as our High Priest and 
Intercessor, made atonement for our guilt 
by offering himself as a sacrifice to God 
on the " altar of the cross," redeeming 



56 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



ns from the curse under which we had 
fallen through transgression of the law. 
But this was not sufficient. It was re- 
quisite, for our assurance, that God the 
Father should show, before men and 
angels, that he accepted the atonement, 
and in Christ our surety justified, or de- 
clared us blameless and innocent, as if 
we had fulfilled the law. He therefore 
raised him from the dead on the third 
day, as " the first fruits of them that 
slept." Christ's resurrection is the gua- 
rantee of our own — to blissful immor- 
tality. He appeared subsequently to 
hundreds, many of whom (independent 
of the apostles and evangelists) were 
living witnesses of the fact when the 
books of the New Testament were pub- 
lished. 

After manifesting himself at intervals 
during forty days on earth, he ascended 
into heaven in the presence of the eleven 
apostles. And almost his last words 
were an injunction to them to " preach 
the gospel to all nations, beginning at 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 57 

Jerusalem." They, however, were slow 
to understand the extent of the blessing 
contemplated, and confined their minis- 
trations exclusively to their own country- 
men, till their views were enlarged by a 
special revelation to St. Peter, and the 
subsequent mission of St. Paul to the 
Gentiles, or heathen world. Jerusalem 
was destroyed a. d. 71, and the ecclesias- 
tical polity of the Jews broken up for 
ever. But long before that time a " con- 
gregation," gathered out of every nation 
— (even, as we are led to believe by an 
epigram of Martial, from the " penitus 
toto divisos orbe Britannos") — had be- 
lieved on Shiloh, the " apostle and high 
priest of our profession." The Holy 
Ghost had been promised by Christ to 
enlighten and instruct his people after 
his departure. Under his unfailing guid- 
ance, the Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and 
Apocalypse, which form the canon of the 
New Testament, were written, one by 
one, by the individuals whose names they 
bear ; the Gospels narrating the life of 

d 5 



58 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



our Saviour, and the Epistles enforcing the 
doctrines of Christianity in their full ex- 
pansion and application to human life 
and conduct. From the latter, more es- 
pecially and explicitly, though by no 
means exclusively, we learn the nature 
and object of the Gospel, the blessings, 
present and future, conferred by it on 
man, and the appointed mode of appro- 
priating those blessings. 

First, then, as to the nature and object 
of the Gospel. And here you will for- 
give a little repetition for the sake of pre- 
cision. 

God, being holy, requires from his 
creatures perfect obedience to his law ; 
the penalty of transgression being eternal 
death. But man, although created " in 
the image of God," is confessedly a fallen 
creature. The law, therefore, — for God 
is just and true, as well as good,— con- 
demns him. 

But the goodness of God has devised a 
means for the pardon and justification of 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



59 



man, and for his preferment to a degree 
of happiness exceeding (there are grounds 
for believing) that which would have 
been his portion had Adam never fallen ; 
and this consistently with his justice and 
his truth. 

He sent his Son, born (as regards his 
human nature) of a woman, yet super- 
naturally pure, and having in him no 
taint of inherited or original sin, to dwell 
among mankind. Jesus Christ rendered 
throughout his life perfect obedience to 
the law in every the minutest particular, 
and then voluntarily offered up his life 
as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sin of 
man ; the divine dignity, mysteriously 
associated with his humanity, adding an 
incalculable value to that obedience and 
that sacrifice. 

God therefore graciously accepts that 
obedience and that sacrifice, and, for the 
sake of Christ, offers remission of sins 
and eternal life to as many as believe in his 
Son's name, and thankfully receive the 
free salvation he has wrought out for them. 



60 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



Thus the apparently conflicting attri- 
butes of God are reconciled ; <c mercy 
and truth kiss each other;" sin is pu- 
nished, and the sinner justified and 
saved. ( 31 ) 

We are justified, then, or " accounted 
righteous before God," solely for the 
merits of Christ, through faith in those 
merits as all-sufficient for our salvation. 
Doubtless we are justified by faith also, 
(an expression frequently used in Scrip- 
ture,) but instru mentally only, as the 
drowning mariner picked up at sea is 
saved by the rope flung out to him from 
the vessel that sails by. Christ is to us 
that vessel, the Ark of our salvation, 
ploughing the billows of this miserable 
mortal life, on which one after other we 
venture our frail shallops, and suffer 
shipwreck ; but that Ark is ever in sight, 
and the rope whereby we may be drawn 
to it and be saved, is ever hanging out, 
and within our reach. On Christ, there- 
fore, alone, must our dependence be, " for 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



61 



wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and 
complete redemption ;" not on the in- 
trinsically worthless though indispen- 
sable instrument which connects us with 
him. ( 33 ) 

By faith, then, thus understood, we re- 
cognize Christ in his threefold office of 
" prophet, priest, and king," as our Re- 
deemer from perdition, our Reconciler to 
God, our spiritual Teacher, and lawful 
Sovereign ; and so recognizing and taking 
refuge in Him, we acknowledge ourselves 
bound, by gratitude and love, to do his 
will to eschew sin and seek after holi- 
ness, to promote God's glory and the 
good of mankind, with our whole heart 
and soul, for evermore. 

The process is simple. We believe ; 
therefore we love Him in whom we be- 
lieve ; therefore we strive to please Him 
whom we love. 

Good works, therefore, are the fruit 
or natural consequence of true faith. But 
faith, as we have seen, is merely a means, 



62 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 

and cannot of itself save us, — nay, it is 
not our own to boast of, but is given us 
of God. Much less, therefore, can good 
works save us. Still they are indispen- 
sable in the exact degree that faith is 
indispensable, since, if wanting, that true 
and lively faith from which they spring, 
and of which they are the evidence, is 
wanting too ; and such being the case, 
we have no part in Christ, since " with- 
out faith it is impossible to please God." 

This important distinction, (most im- 
portant, in order to preclude, on the one 
hand, the delusion of mistaking human 
merit for the cause of acceptance with 
God, and, on the other, that of resting 
satisfied with that barren faith, untesti- 
fied by works, which we may hold in 
common with Satan and his angels,) is 
illustrated by an analogy indicated in 
Scripture between human and vegetable 
nature. 

A tree, transplanted from a barren to 
a fertile soil, derives life and vigour from 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



63 



the ground in which it is rooted and the 
air which it imbibes, and manifests that 
life by the fruit it produces. The fruit 
is a consequence and an evidence, not the 
cause, of the life of the tree, and if that 
fruit be wanting, the mandate goes forth, 
" Cut it down ; why cumbereth it the 
ground ?" Yet, though not the origi- 
nating cause of the life of the tree, the 
fruit is treasured up by the gardener ; 
the tree is " known of its fruits," and 
held in honour accordingly. 

In the very same manner a human 
being, " rooted and grounded " in Christ, 
and imbibing the blessed influences of 
the Holy Spirit, produces the " fruits of 
faith," which are the consequence and 
evidence, not the cause, of his spiritual 
life ; if they be wanting, he is considered 
spiritually dead, and, as in the analogous 
instance, the mandate goes forth, " Cut 
him down ; why cumbereth he the 
ground V 9 Yet, though not the originat- 
ing cause of the spiritual life of the 
Christian, the fruit he produces is valued 



64 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 

and treasured up by Christ his Redeemer, 
and he receives for it in heaven a pro- 
portionate reward- — of grace, or favour, 
though not of debt. " Blessed are the 
dead who die in the Lord, . . . and their 
works do follow them !" 

We are justified, therefore, to adopt the 
admirable summary of Archbishop Cran- 
mer, ( 34 ) " of God freely, by his mercy, 
without our deserts, through true and 
lively faith ;" or, as St. Paul expresses 
it, " faith which workethby love." Faith 
is the instrument, Christ the meritorious 
cause of our salvation. 

Having cleared our way thus far, we 
shall now have less difficulty in under- 
standing those passages which abound in 
Scripture, such as St. Paul's aphorism, 
" If any man be in Christ, he is a new 
creature" and others, intimating that a 
total change takes place in the moral 
nature of man, as the consequence of 
rightly believing in Jesus. Marvellous 
as it may appear, this is indeed the truth. 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



65 



We believe in Christ ; therefore we love 
Him, and become conformed to his like- 
ness. 

The change of character thus produced, 
styled in Scripture fxeravoia, or, " con- 
version," is so radically complete, and so 
absolutely necessary, that Christ himself 
tells us, " Unless a man be born again," 
(or, more literally, " anew/') " he cannot 
see the kingdom of God." And that 
such should be the case, is both reason- 
able and inevitable, on assent to the pre- 
ceding propositions touching the respec- 
tive natures and relative position of God 
and man. 

Man, as already observed, was created 
in the image of God. His reason, his 
imagination, his understanding, and his 
will, were all in harmony with each other 
and with the Deity. But, in consequence 
of Adam's fall, this harmony has been 
disturbed, and a principle of disunion 
introduced, the consequence of which is, 
that man, as now born into the world, is 
at enmity with God and with himself; 



66 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 

the antagonist elements of his being 
pulling him in opposite directions, like 
wild horses attached to the limbs of a 
criminal. Jesus Christ is the only human 
being since the fall of Adam whose cha- 
racter has exhibited the harmony of 
human nature in its original perfection. 
The object of Christianity is to conform 
man to the image of Christ, and thus 
restore that harmony ; — not that it can 
ever be fully restored in this life, while 
our spirits are linked to this " body of 
sin, 5 ' but the will, the inclination is 
changed, and after this fizravoia we no 
longer acquiesce in the moral discord 
which we endured, or delighted in before. 

And that this " new birth " of the soul 
must, in the nature of things, take place 
on earth, will be clear on a very simple 
consideration. The tree, we are told, 
lies (in a spiritual sense) as it falls. The 
change that will take place in every human 
spirit, on dropping its mortal coil, is one 
of degree, not of difference ; the moral 
qualities, which are necessarily developed 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



67 



only partially here, either for good or 
evil, will then expand at once to their 
full proportion, either in the one or the 
other direction ; the impious will not 
become holy, nor the impure pure ; but, 
on the contrary, each will remain in 
quality what he was before, only with 
immeasurably increased intensity of ex- 
istence, and (if permitted) of action. If, 
therefore, as we have reason to believe, 
harmony prevails in heaven, and if the 
love of God be the key-note of that har- 
mony, the mainspring of existence in that 
upper world, a spirit that has not here 
below undergone that renovation, and 
been restored, in degree, to the original 
harmony of creation, but, on the contrary, 
should find itself, on a sudden introduc- 
tion to the presence of God, at moral 
enmity with the Supreme Being, and with 
all its affections cleaving to the earth it 
has quitted, — that spirit would be utterly 
unable to relish, nay, if permitted (I had 
had almost said, condemned) to dwell 
there, would loathe the enjoyments and 



68 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



society of heaven, as utterly uncongenial 
to its nature, and fly to hell by prefer- 
ence. 

I have repeated the words " in degree" 
more than once in the above sentences. 
I must repeat them once more. The 
conversion, the transformation, the rege- 
neration, the renovation, the new birth, 
(for all these words are sometimes used 
indifferently to express nearly the same 
idea,) though necessarily begun on earth, 
must ever on earth be imperfect. An 
example of absolute perfection is set be- 
fore us in Christ, but we never come up 
to that pattern. Still it is so lovely, that, 
fascinated and delighted, we ever strive 
and follow after it, though for ever com- 
pelled to lag behind, confessing that, in 
comparison with his immaculate purity, 
we are " utterly unclean," and daily and 
hourly seeking pardon, through his merits, 
for our shortcomings and omissions in 
the service of God. 

This change, this renovation, however, 



OF CHRISTIANITY, 



69 



in its beginning, progress, and end, may 
be objected to as against the common 
course of human nature. Undoubtedly 
so— as human nature is at present con- 
stituted. Nothing less than a superna- 
tural influence can effect it. 

But as the Trinity in Unity has, in the 
Person of the Father, provided, and, in 
the Person of the Son, worked out, a re- 
medy for human misery ; is it probable 
that it will leave its work unaccomplished, 
that remedy unapplied ? The presump- 
tion is to the contrary ; and, accordingly, 
we find that Scripture expressly affirms 
the agency of the Holy Spirit in the ap- 
plication of the remedy, not merely, in the 
first instance, by the bestowal on us of 
that faith whereby, instrumentally, we 
appropriate the blessings of salvation, but 
ever afterwards, mysteriously dwelling in 
the Christian, whose body is therefore 
asserted to be " the temple of the Holy 
Ghost," and required to be kept in ac- 
cordant purity,— dwelling in him hence- 
forward, assisting him in his warfare 



70 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 

against sin, and his prosecution of holi- 
ness, even unto the close of life. ( 35 ) 

Yet, on the other hand, while fully ad- 
mitting that the salvation of every human 
being is from first to last the work of God, 
we must beware of imputing favouritism to 
the Deity, in the supposition that the 
remedy is only partially applied, or that 
stronger influence is exerted on one man 
than another, in order to win him to 
heaven. 

On the contrary we know, with absolute 
assurance from the lips of God, that 
Christ's atonement was offered for all, 
and that its benefits are open to all, 
without any exception or reservation what- 
ever. " Come unto me, all ye who labour 
and are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest," was the Saviour's own invitation 
during his ministry on earth ; as, " Go 
ye into all the world, and preach the 
Gospel to every creature" was his part- 
ing commission to his apostles ; and the 
sense in which the apostles understood 
that commission is evident from the brief 



OF CHRISTIANITY* 



71 



summary of their testimony bequeathed 
to us by St. John, " The blood of Jesus 
Christ cleanseth from all sin !" ( 36 ) 

God even condescends to expostulate, 
I may say, implores mankind, to accept 
eternal life. His Spirit strives with every 
man, drawing him towards Christ, till he 
either yields, or provokes God to harden 
him judicially, as He did in the case of 
Pharaoh. God therefore puts it in the 
power of every one to choose whether 
he will serve Him or not, and it is each 
man's own individual fault if he is not 
saved. Much may still be mysterious 
and obscure, yet we already see enough 
to conclude with perfect confidence that, 
when the veil is uplifted from our eyes 
in another world, justice (in the very 
same sense that we attach to the idea 
here) will appear to have been from first 
to last a regulating principle in the Divine 
economy towards mankind. 

Lastly, (it would need no enforcement, 
were we as mindful as we ought to be, 



72 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 

that, like the banished angels, but oh ! 
how differently dealt with ! we have 
" lost our first estate" of primal inno- 
cence, and have nothing wherewith to 
stay the avenging arm of Heaven save the 
helpless cry of " Mercy, mercy!") sal- 
vation by Christ is offered, and is to be 
received " freely," as a gratuitous, un- 
merited gift. The single, sole, primary, 
and ultimate cause of acceptance with 
God is the merit of Christ. The moment 
that human merit is depended upon, (be 
it of works, be it of faith, be it even of 
the sanctification worked by God in the 
heart,) the moral law, which has been 
satisfied in our behalf bv Christ, and to 
which we are described as " dead " while 
we are " alive in him," revives in all 
its condemnatory rigour. The glory of 
the Gospel is its delivering us from the 
bondage of the law. Light and air are 
not bestowed on man so freely, so unre- 
servedly, as the benefits of the Gospel are 
on every one, (young or old, rich or poor, 
wise or simple, on the child barely con- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



73 



scious of sin, or on the parricide,) on 
every one, who seeks them from God 
through his Redeemer. 

How, then, is an interest in this salva- 
tion, with all its accompanying blessings, 
to be obtained ? What are the " means 
of grace?" Prayer, the study of God's 
w 7 ord, public worship, and the sacra- 
ments. 

The most unlimited promises are made 
to those who pray to God through Christ. 
" Ask, and it shall be given you ; seek, 
and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be 
opened unto you. For every one that 
asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh 
findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall 
be opened." " All things whatsoever ye 
shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall 
receive." When once a prayer of two 
words, of one word, a mere silent aspira- 
tion of the heart, has ascended to heaven 
in sincerity and truth, the Holy Spirit 
has been already at work in that heart, 
and will continue to influence it, unless 

E 



74 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 

" grieved/ 5 and forced to depart, by wilful 
neglect of its admonitions. 

Prayer, too, must accompany the study 
of the Scriptures, which without it will 
be but a sealed volume, and with it will 
be found our sure guide to the knowledge 
of the will of God, full of comfort in every 
difficulty and perplexity. ( 36 ) Public 
worship, too, is indispensable, for collec- 
tively, no less than individually, are all 
men bound and privileged to approach 
their Maker with supplication and praise. 

And of high and vital importance are 
the tw r o sacraments of Baptism and the 
Lord's Supper : — Baptism, the rite, anti- 
typical to the Hebraic circumcision, and 
figurative, by the immersion and emersion 
of the new-born infant from the " laver 
of regeneration," of that " death unto sin 
and new birth " (or resurrection) " unto 
righteousness," which the Holy Spirit 
works in the Christian ; the rite by which, 
externally and visibly, he is introduced 
within the pale of the Church, and made 
a covenanted partaker of its spiritual pri- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



75 



vileges, and by which, internally and 
invisibly, a seed (as it were) of Divine 
grace is conveyed to him, which, though 
it may lie dormant for years, retains its 
vitality, and will germinate in the quick- 
ening beams of the Sun of Righteousness, 
whenever the strong axe of conviction 
breaks through the ice of unbelief with 
which the atmosphere of the world is apt 
to incrust the heart in which it lies : — 

And the Lord's Supper, the antitype to 
the Jewish Passover ; the rite commemo- 
rative of the death of Christ as a sacrifice 
for sin, and invaluable as a means or 
channel by which that spiritual food, the 
body and blood of Christ, is "verily and 
indeed taken and received by the faithful" 
servants of Jesus, "whereby not only 
their souls live to eternal life, but they 
surely trust to win their bodies a resur- 
rection to immortality,''— a rite which 
all who are in earnest in the desire of this 
consummation, and aware of the freedom 
with which they are invited to partake of 
it, continually resort to, from the first 

e 2 



76 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



hour of conviction of sin, to the last 
moment of consciousness on the brink of 
eternity. Many, indeed, are deterred 
from receiving this holy sacrament by a 
sense of their " unworthiness." But the 
truth is, that a sense of unworthiness is 
the best possible preparation for its recep- 
tion ; inasmuch as it is not any merit on 
our part, but a deep sorrow and compunc- 
tion for sin, and dependence on Christ for 
pardon, and for grace to resist sin in 
future, which are pre-requisite to render us 
" worthy," or in a fit state, to approach 
the Lord's Table. All human "worthi- 
ness," weighed in the balance with God's 
requirements, must (if we fall back on the 
law) kick the beam. 

Such are the cc means of grace :" 
through the neglect of any one of them 
spiritual life decays. 

Hitherto, inestimable as they are, we 
have chiefly considered what may be 
called the negative blessings purchased 
for us by Christ, viz. forgiveness of sins 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



77 



and exemption from eternal punishment. 
But over and above these, there are 
blessings of a positive nature to be noticed. 

And first, as respects earth, the scene of 
our probation. We are provided with a 
staff which will never fail us in the direct and 
efficient support which our unseen Re- 
deemer affords us throughout our pilgrim- 
age ; and, to encourage us and beguile the 
length of the journey, we are vouchsafed, 
like Moses from the heights of Pisgah, a 
glimpse, distant and necessarily indistinct, 
but lovely withal and cheering to our 
eyes, of the "promised land" of our 
inheritance beyond the dark Jordan, the 
river of death, that rolls between it and 
us. 

To affirm that Christianity secures us 
from sufferings in this world would be 
absurd, but they are all softened and 
alleviated by the knowledge that they are 
sent for our benefit, to wean our hearts 
from earthly ties, and fix them on God ; 
by the consciousness that under our 
sharpest trials we are in the hands of a 



78 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



very merciful Saviour, who in his human 
nature is able to sympathize with, and in 
his divine nature to relieve them, who, 
having been " in all points tempted like 
as we are, yet without sin," "is able 
to succour them that are tempted," 
and who " will not suffer us to be 
tempted beyond what we are able to 
bear — by the reflection that it would be 
unreasonable for us (as some one has 
beautifully expressed it) to expect to wear 
a crown of roses where He wore a crown 
of thorns ; by the indwelling and assist- 
ance of the Holy Spirit, already alluded 
to ; and by the confident anticipation, 
through the merits of Christ, of future 
happiness. Moreover, in all the troubles 
and through the whole mortal career of 
the Christian, internal peace is his con- 
stant guest, and communion with God by 
prayer and praise, his constant privilege ; 
while the continual sense of the presence 
and providence of his Redeemer emboldens 
him cheerfully " to fight the good fight of 
faith/ 5 in humble affiance on the gracious 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



79 



promise, " I will never leave thee, nor 
forsake thee !" 

But it is to the world unseen that the 
finger of the Gospel points as the scene of 
the crowning glories of redemption. We 
cannot, it is true, uplift the veil, or form 
any adequate conception of the " good 
things 55 reserved for us beyond it, and which, 
we are told, surpass what has " entered into 
the heart of man to conceive." But that 
the moral affections will there find a defi- 
nite and all-sufficing object, and that per- 
fection will be the measure of bliss to each 
individual spirit according to its capacity, 
we know ; while that the intellect, in its 
various departments — the imagination, 
with all its susceptibilities to grandeur 
and beauty — whatever, in short, distin- 
guishes man, as connected with animal 
organisation, from the brutes that perish, 
will there find food for inquiry and 
expatiation in the boundless field of 
creation, in the works and attributes of 
God, — and that human nature, emanci- 
pated from every clog of earth, will 



80 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



expand in that brighter sky to that full 
and equable proportion of excellence, 
dignity, and power, of which hints only 
are afforded us here below, growing 
continually in conformity to God, and not 
improbably assisting in the operations of 
the Divine economy — are presumptions 
deducible by the fairest analogy from the 
present constitution of the human mind 
and body, both of which (be it remem- 
bered) are destined eventually, after the re- 
surrection, to be re-united with the parted 
spirit in perfection and immortality. ( 37 ) 

And that familiarity with the noblest 
and most exalted beings of the universe 
will by no means impair our natural 
affections to those whom we have loved 
on earth ; but that, on the contrary, they 
will be our intimate associates for ever, 
we are mercifully assured by Him who 
knew what was in the heart of man, and 
has sanctified the tears shed over departed 
friends by his own example at the grave 
of Lazarus. ( 38 ) 

There is, moreover, a peculiar element 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



81 



of bliss in the happiness of the redeemed 
in heaven, more exquisite by far than 
even the angels, who never fell, can 
appreciate. They are ivayyeXoi, like or 
eqnal to the angels, in all other respects, 
but in this their superiors. The angels 
are still the same spotless beings they 
were when first created. They can never 
enter into those feelings of personal love 
and gratitude with which Christians who 
have been rescued from perdition regard 
their Saviour. In a description of the 
court of heaven in the Apocalypse, in 
which, in the eastern manner, degrees of 
favour may be considered as indicated by 
propinquity to the sovereign, the angels 
are represented as standing in a circle 
round the throne, but the redeemed 
within that circle, and directly in front of 
it. ( 39 ) Man, even in his earthly condition, 
is a being, in the eyes of the unseen world, 
of most exalted dignity, as the redeemed 
of Christ, the heir of immortality. The 
angels are represented as takingthe deepest 
interest in his welfare, as rejoicing " in the 

e 5 



82 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



presence of God, over one sinner that 
repenteth," as being " ministering spirits 
to the heirs of salvation," as conveying 
them, after their emancipation by death, 
to the paradise of God. ( 40 ) 

And let ns reflect that this bliss is "for 
ever and ever." No possibility of falling 
away — "No more death, neither sorrow, 
nor crying, neither shall there be any 
more pain, for the former things are 
passed away." After all, it is by nega- 
tives only, that, in our present state of 
sorrow and imperfection, we can in any 
degree adequately realize the promised 
bliss of heaven. 

On the other hand, reverting to the 
analogical argument, the increased deve- 
lopement that all the faculties of man will 
undergo at the resurrection, taken in 
connexion with the appalling denuncia- 
tions of eternal torments to those who 
reject the Saviour, or who die in mere 
forgetfulness of God— ("The wicked 
shall be cast into hell, and all the people 
that forget God !") — lead us to the conclu- 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



83 



sion, that the susceptibility of the creature, 
so raised, to suffering, will be at least com- 
mensurate to his capability of bliss. How 
awful then to reflect that on our adoption 
or rejection of Jesus Christ as our Saviour 
in this life (" now is the accepted time^ 
now is the day of salvation !") depends 
the bliss or bale of eternity! Eternity, 
which after as many myriads of ages have 
succeeded each other as there exist 
organised atoms throughout the universe 
of creation, will still be (so to speak) in 
its infancy ! The holiness, justice, truth, 
and goodness of God, shall sooner melt 
into each other and fade away, than the 
bliss of eternity attain its period or its 
acme. To contemplate the reverse of the 
picture is too painful. 



Thus, my dear sir, at much greater 
length than I at first intended, have I laid 
before you the views that I believe to be 
the soundest, soberest, and most scriptural, 



84 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



entertained on this interesting subject ; 
and I earnestly hope that this bird's-eye 
sketch (for it is nothing more) of the 
system of Christianity, of its reasonable- 
ness as a whole, and of the dependency 
and harmony of its parts, may not 
be unacceptable to you at the present 
moment. I dare say that there are many 
better proofs and illustrations than I have 
adduced, and that more reflection might 
have suggested a better train of argument. 
But I was anxious to lose no time, and 
therefore have merely adduced those 
proofs, and used the reasoning which has 
made most impression on my own mind. 
Almost every clause of what I have writ- 
ten (especially in the earlier part of this 
letter) might be amplified to several pages, 
and many of the various positions and 
arguments, fully treated, occupy able 
volumes. ( 41 ) In short, I can compare 
the evidence for Christianity to nothing 
but the stars of heaven for harmony and 
multiplicity. 

But, before concluding, permit me 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



85 



once more to repeat what I said yester- 
day, (indeed you assented to it,) that reli- 
gion has its seat in the heart, not the 
intellect. We are too much in the habit 
of generalising and losing sight of the 
deep individual interest we severally pos- 
sess in the blessings of the Gospel. We 
feel a vague sense of obligation, as mem- 
bers of a vast community, but little of 
that lively personal gratitude which flows 
spontaneously from our hearts towards 
the fellow-creatures to whom we are in- 
debted for mere worldly benefits. Yet 
should this be ? Shall we deny that to 
God which the common impulses of our 
nature concede to man ? For of all vir- 
tues gratitude is held in highest honour 
among mankind, and the brand of ingra- 
titude is the blackest with which huma- 
nity can be stigmatised. If Christ died 
for the great family of mankind collec- 
tively, does this lessen the value of the 
truth, that he also died, as voluntarily 
and as freely, for every unit of the 
myriads which form its aggregate ? Away 



86 THE EVIDENCES AND THEORY 



then with frigid generalisations. If the 
Son of God, beholding our lost and mi- 
serable estate, divested himself of his 
primeval glory, and took our nature 
upon him in its lowliest and humblest 
form — mingled, the pure with the impure, 
(to whose immaculate innocence the mere 
sight and contact of sin must have been 
agony,) — encountered temptations which 
he could have quelled with a word, in 
order to show 7 us how to meet and van- 
quish them in his strength and after his 
example, —submitted himself to be re- 
viled, buffeted, spit upon, and crucified, 
not merely to ransom us from hell, but 
to purchase for us heaven, (for us, his 
declared enemies !) and finally, by the 
bequest of his Holy Spirit, dictated for 
us a faithful record of his ministry, to be 
" a lamp unto our feet and a light unto 
our path" in following his footsteps, — and 
all this (for I must press the point home) 
as freely, as willingly, for each one of us, 
as if earth had been, with the exception 
of that one individual, yourself or me, 



OF CHRISTIANITY. 



87 



one vast desert, without an inhabitant — 
In common gratitude, then, let us take 
each of these blessings personally home 
to our hearts, and strive to please him 
and do his will, as we would that of the 
meanest fellow-creature to whom (could 
the supposition be allowed) we were simi- 
larly beholden. The course is simple. 
Once intellectually convinced that Chris- 
tianity is from heaven, that Christ our 
Saviour was God incarnate, we must be- 
come little children in docility and hu- 
mility, while we pray to Him earnestly 
and perseveringly to enlighten us, lead 
us to the truth, and enable us to discern 
and embrace it, and bring forth the fruits 
of holiness accordingly. And if we do so 
pray, manfully exerting ourselves at the 
same time against our own evil natures, 
(for we must strive, as it has been admi- 
rably said, as if everything depended on 
our exertions, and pray as if everything 
depended on our prayers,) we have the 
faithful promise of God, that he will 
work in us all that we desire, and will 



88 THE EVIDENCES, &C. 

enable us to respond with grateful alacrity 
to his emphatic petition addressed seve- 
rally to each of us, (it is all he asks — it 
is the least we can accord him in return 
for his priceless mercies,) " My son, give 
me thy heart !" 

Believe me, 
Yours most sincerely, 
&c. &c. 



NOTE S. 



Note 1, Page 3. 

See the Bridgewater Treatises, Paley's Natural 
Theology, &c. 

Note 2, Page 3. 

A future life may also be clearly deduced by 
Natural Religion; see part L, chapter i., of Butler's 
Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed. 

Note 3, Page 7. 

See the first part and the fifth chapter of part 
second of Butler's Analogy. 

Note 4, Page 8. 

These positions are sufficient for my purpose. 
But an elaborate argument, establishing the ex- 



90 



NOTES. 



istence and reception of the Pentateuch backwards 
from period to period, up to the time of Moses, 
may be seen either in the Rev. George Faber's 
Horse Mosaicae, or in Dean Graves' Lectures on 
the four last books of the Pentateuch, works of high 
merit and extreme interest. 

Note 5, Page 9. 

See, in illustration of this, Dr. Keith's Evidence 
of Prophecy. 

Note 6, Page 11. 
Isaiah xlix. 7. Bishop Lowth's translation. 

Note 7, Page 17. 

u It would be more inconceivable that several 
men should have agreed to fabricate such a book, 
than that a single personage should have furnished 
the subject. Never could Jewish authors have 
invented either this tone of character or this mo- 
rality. And the Gospel has marks of veracity so 
great, so striking, and so perfectly inimitable, that 
the inventor of it would be more astonishing than 
the hero." «/. J. Rousseau, quoted by Dr. Hales, 
New Analysis of Chronology, &c, vol. iii., p. 274 ; 
— a storehouse of information. 

Note 8, Page 20- 

Most of the points of evidence here enumerated 
will be found ably illustrated in the Rev. J. H. 



NOTES. 



91 



Home's " Introduction to the Critical Study and 
Knowledge of the Scriptures." 

I would also refer to the " History of the Trans- 
mission of Ancient Books to Modern Times," 8vo. 
1827 ; and to the " Process of Historical Proof 
Exemplified and Illustrated, with Observations on 
the Peculiar Points of the Christian Evidence," 
8vo. 1828, by Mr. Isaac Taylor, author of the 
" Natural History of Enthusiasm/' as establishing 
the proposition, that the proof of the authenticity 
of the Scriptures, Jewish and Christian, " far ex- 
ceeds, in every separate part of it, that of the best 
authenticated record of antiquity and this by a 
comparison between the Greek and Roman authors 
and the Scriptures in the following particulars : — 

1 . " The number of manuscripts which passed down through 
the middle ages. 

2. The antiquity of some existing manuscripts. 

3. The extent of surface over which copies were diffused at 
an early date. 

4. The importance attached to the books by their pos- 
sessors. 

5o The respect paid to them by copyists of later ages. 

6. The wide separation, or the open hostility of those by 
whom these books were preserved. 

7. The visible effects of these books from age to age. 

8. The body of references and quotations.* 

* " From the Rabbinical paraphrases, and from the works 
of the christian writers of the first seven centuries, (to come 
later is unnecessary,) the whole text of the Scriptures might 
have been recovered, if the originals had since perished." 
History &c, p. 214. 



92 



NOTES. 



9. Early versions. 

10. The vernacular extinction of the languages or idioms in 
which these books were written. 

11. The means of comparison with spurious works, or with 
works intended to share the reputation acquired by others. 

12. The strength of the inference from the genuineness to 
the credibility of the books." 

" The antiquity," observes Mr. Taylor, " of the 
records of the christian faith is substantiated by 
evidence in a tenfold proportion more various, 
copious, and conclusive than that which can be 
adduced in support of any other ancient writings. 
So that if the question had no other importance 
belonging to it than what may attach to a purely 
literary inquiry, or if only the strict justice of the 
case were regarded, the authenticity of the Jewish 
and Christian Scriptures would never be contro- 
verted till the entire body of classical literature had 
been proved to be spurious." 

Note 9, Page 23. 

" Christianity is a scheme quite beyond our 
comprehension. . . . The Scripture expressly as- 
serts it to be so. And indeed one cannot read a 
passage relating to this great mystery of godliness^ 
but what immediately runs up into something 
which shows us our ignorance in it, as everything 
in nature shows us our ignorance in the constitu- 
tion of nature. And whoever will seriously consi- 
der that part of the christian scheme which is re- 



NOTES. 



93 



vealed in Scripture, will find so much more unre- 
vealed, as will convince him that, to all the purposes 
of judging and objecting, we know as little of it as 
of the constitution of nature. Our ignorance, 
therefore, is as much an answer to our objections 
against the perfection of one, as against the per- 
fection of the other." — Butler's Analogy, part II., 
chap. iv. 

Note 10, Page 24. 

See the chapters entitled " The State of Sacred 
Science, 5 the " Hidden World," the " State of 
Seclusion," the " Limits of Revelation," and the 
" Vastness of the Material Universe," in " Satur- 
day Evening," by the author of the " Natural His- 
tory of Enthusiasm." 

" There is a great resemblance between the 
light of nature and of revelation The hin- 
drances, too, of natural and of supernatural light 
and knowledge, have been of the same kind. And 
as, it is owned, the whole scheme of Scripture is 
not yet understood, so, if it ever comes to be un- 
derstood, before the restitution of all things, and 
without miraculous interpositions, it must be in the 
same way as natural knowledge is come at ; by the 
continuance and progress of learning and of liberty, 
and by particular persons attending to, comparing, 
and pursuing intimations scattered up and down it, 
which are overlooked and disregarded by the gene- 



94 



NOTES. 



rality of the world. For this is the way in which 
all improvements are made ; by thoughtful men's 
tracing on obscure hints, as it were, dropped us by 
nature accidentally, or which seem to come into 
our minds by chance. Nor is it at all incredible that 
a book, which has been so long in the possession of 
mankind, should contain many truths as yet undis- 
covered. For all the same phenomena, and the 
same faculties of investigation, from which such 
great discoveries in natural knowledge have been 
made in the present and last age, were equally in 
the possession of mankind several thousand years 
before. And possibly it might be intended that 
events, as they come to pass, should open and as- 
certain the meaning of several parts of Scripture." 
— Butler s Analogy > part II., chap. iii. 

Note 11, Page 26. 

" Creavit Dei," would be the same construction 
in Latin ; " les Dieux crea," in French. And 
this, observes Dr. Pye Smith, " is the ordinary 
construction through the whole Hebrew Bible," 
when the w T ord Elohim is used with reference to 
the Almighty. See the " Scripture Testimony to 
the Messiah," 3rd edit. vol. i., p. 464, sqq. And 
for the Scripture doctrine of the Trinity, Dr. 
Hales' " Analysis of Chronology," vol* iii., p. 286, 
sqq. " The doctrine," observes the latter writer, 
" of the three persons of the Godhead, seems to 



NOTES. 



95 



have been fully established in the Jewish Church 
at the coming of Christ. John evidently recorded 
it as the received doctrine, when he testified that 
the Father declared Jesus, by a voice from heaven, 
to be his beloved Son, and the Holy Spirit rested 
upon him at baptism. The doctrine is found in 
the Chaldee Paraphrast, and in Philo. The Jews 
only doubted or denied that Jesus was that Son." 
p. 288. 

Note 12, Page 26. 

See Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson's " Manners and 
Customs of the Ancient Egyptians," second series, 
vol. i., p. 185, sqq. Also, as respects the Pagan 
Trinities, Dr. Hales' Chronology, vol. iv., p. 469, 
sqq. 

Note 13, Page 28. 
Bishop Home's Discourses, vol. i., p. 68. 

Note 14, Page 31. 
" Analysis of Chronology/' &c, vol. ii., p. 8. 

Note 15, Page 32. 

See the Rev. George Holden's excellent (( Dis- 
sertation on the Fall of Man, in which the literal 
sense of the Mosaic account of that event is as- 
serted and vindicated," 8vo. 1823 ; and the " Horas 
Mosaicae." 



96 



NOTES. 



Note 16, Page 35. 

See the marginal note in the Bible, and the most 
ancient versions. 

Note 17, Page 35. 

See Archbishop Magee's " Discourses on the 
Scriptural Doctrines of Atonement and Sacrifice," 
new edit. 3 vols., 8vo., 1832 ; — an invaluable work. 

Note 18, Page 37. 

See Home's Introduction, &c, vol. i., pp. 148 — 
161 ; Faber's Horae Mosaicae, vol. i. pp. 98 — 136 ; 
and Sir William Jones's ninth Anniversary Dis- 
course, " On the Origin and Families of Nations." 

Note 19, Page 39. 

See Hales' Chronology, vol. iii., p. 53, sqq. ; and 
also vol. i., p. 272, sqq., for 'the reasons that exist 
for restoring seven hundred years, abstracted by 
the Jews from the chronology of the Bible, to the 
duration of the world subsequently to the deluge. 

Note 20, Page 40. 

Quoted, from St. Basil's Homily on the Trials of 
Job, by Dr. Hales, vol. ii , p. 92. This might be 
used as an argument in proof of the recognition of 
friends in the world to come. 



NOTES. 



97 



Note 21, Page 41. 

Melchizedek could not have been Shem, as some 
suppose, at least if the rectification of the scriptural 
chronology alluded to in a preceding note be justly 
founded, of which I think there can be no reason- 
able doubt. 

Note 22, Page 43. 

I have attempted to illustrate this, and the sub- 
sequent history of the shepherd kings, in the fourth 
of my " Letters on Egypt, Edom, and the Holy 
Land," 3rd edit. vol. i. p. 88, sqq. 

Note 23, Page 45. 

On this subject see the excellent works of Graves 
and Faber. 

Note 24, Page 47. 

See Leslie's <e Short and Easy Method with the 
Deists." His four celebrated rules, " which, when- 
ever they can be truly applied to any events, ex- 
clude every reasonable doubt of their reality," are, 
" First, that the facts be of such a nature as that 
men's senses can clearly and fully judge of them ; 
secondly, that they be performed publicly ; third- 
ly, that not only public monuments be kept up, but 
that some outward actions be constantly performed 

F 



98 



NOTES* 



irt memory of the facts thus publicly wrought ; and ? 
fourthly,, that these monuments be set up, and these 
actions and observances be instituted, at the very 
time when these events took place, and continued 
without interruption afterwards." These rules will 
be found applied in detail to the Mosaic miracles 
by Dean Graves, " Lectures/' &c» Part I., sec- 
tion vi. 

Let me here invite attention to the following ob- 
servations of Mr. Taylor : " Whenever it is said 
that the events recorded in the Scriptures are 
presented to us in a form purposely adapted to 
exercise our faith, it should always be added, by 
way of illustrating the exact meaning of the words, 
that the events recorded by Thucydides and 
Tacitus are also presented to us in a form adapted 
to exercise our faith. Yet it would evidently be 
more exactly proper to say, that this sort of evi- 
dence is adapted to give exercise to reason ; for 
faith has no part in things which lie within the 
known boundaries of the mundane system. And 
facts, intelligible in themselves, though properly 
miraculous, are, when duly attested, in conformity 
to the ordinary principles of evidence, as much a 
part of the mundane system, as the most familiar 
transactions of ordinary life. 

(C The Scriptures do indeed make a demand upon 
our faith ; but it is exclusively in regard to facts 
which lie above and beyond the world with which 



NOTES. 



99 



we are conversant, and of which facts we could 
know nothing by the ordinary means of information. 
But our assent to miraculous events is demanded 
purely on the ground of common sense. The facts 
are as comprehensible as the most ordinary occur- 
rences ; and the evidence upon which they are 
attested implies nothing beyond the well-known 
principles of human nature. He, then, who does 
violence to the standing laws of the present system, 
by rejecting this evidence, displays, not a want of 
faith, for that is not called for, but a want of rea- 
son. To one who affected to question the received 
account of the death of Julius Caesar, we should 
not say, c You want faith,' but 6 You want common 
sense.' It is the very nature of a miracle to appeal 
to the evidence of universal experience, in order 
that, afterwards, a demand may be made upon 
faith in relation to extra-mundane facts." — History 
of the Transmission of Ancient Books to Modern 
Times, p. 229. 



The external evidence of the truth of the Mosaic 
narrative, derived from profane tradition, has neces- 
sarily been alluded to but slightly in this letter ; it 
is detailed at large (and most interesting it is) in 
the first section of the Horae Mosaicae of Mr. 
Faber, who sums it up in the following words : 

F 2 



100 



NOTES. 



" Thus have we followed the stream of profane 
tradition, from the very creation itself, to the period 
when the Egyptian tyrant was constrained by the 
mighty arm of God to dismiss the oppressed Israel- 
ites : and though we have frequently seen it cor- 
rupted with extraneous matter, or gliding beneath 
the luxuriant foliage of allegory, yet its purity has 
never been so far debased, as to preclude the possi- 
bility of discovering the fountain from which it 
originally issued. 

" 1. We have observed that nearly every pagan 
cosmogony, in a manner strictly analogous to the 
exordium of Genesis, describes darkness and water 
to be the fundamental principles of the universe ; 
and sometimes we have even found, that the work 
of creation is said to have been accomplished in 
precisely six different periods of time. 

" 2. Proceeding in our researches, we have met 
with almost a general tradition, that man was once 
upright and innocent ; but that, through the envy 
of a malicious demon, he forfeited his pristine 
integrity, and became the sport of disease and cor- 
ruption : we have seen the remembrance of that 
form, which the tempter assumed, preserved with an 
uncommon degree of accuracy : and we have beheld 
the universal expectation of some victorious power, 
some mediatorial deity, who was destined to bruise 
the head of the vanquished serpent. 

" 3. Next, from the unanimous testimony of the 
ancient mythologists, we learned that the depravity 



NOTES. 



101 



of mankind gradually attained to such a height as 
to provoke the vengeance of Heaven ; that the 
avenues to divine mercy were closed ; and that a 
tremendous flood of waters swept away every living 
soul in undistinguished ruin. Along with this 
tradition, we found all nations entertaining a belief 
that some pious prince was saved in an ark from the 
dreadful calamity which desolated a whole world : 
we observed, that, in many countries, even the 
number of his companions was recorded with singu- 
lar accuracy : we met with various evident allusions 
to the same awful event in the Gentile memorials of 
the dove and the ship : and we beheld the remem- 
brance of it entering deeply into the mythologic 
system of every region, whether situated in the 
Eastern or the Western hemisphere. 

" 4. Advancing next into the confines of the 
renovated world, we saw the second progenitor of 
mankind transformed into one of the principal gods 
of the Pagans, while every important circumstance 
of his life was accurately detailed. His mythological 
birth from the ark, in the midst of clouds and 
tempests ; his skill in husbandry ; his triple offspring ; 
and the unworthy treatment which he experienced 
from one of his family: all these passed in review 
before our eyes, and stamped indelibly the bright 
characters of truth upon the sacred page of Scrip- 
ture. We then traced the eventful history of the 
Cuthic Nimrod and his Babylonic tower, when the 
vollied thunder of heaven was directed against an 



102 



NOTES. 



impious race, and when the frantic projects of vain 
man were defeated by the immediate interference of 
Omnipotence. Lastly, we met various records of 
the ancient patriarchs in the writings of profane 
historians : we saw Greece and China combining to 
prove the real existence of a seven years' famine in 
the days of Joseph ; and we beheld an uninterrupted 
tradition of the exodus of Israel preserved in the 
secluded deserts of Arabia. 

" Sufficient, therefore, has now been said to con- 
vince any candid inquirer, that the principal facts 
related in the books of Moses do by no means 
depend upon his solitary testimony, but that they 
are supported by the concurrent voice of all na- 
tions/' — Horce Mosaicce, sect. i. chapter v. vol. 1. 
p. 192. 

Note 25, Page 47. 
That this was a still greater and more indispu- 
table miracle than the passage of the Red Sea, see 
Leslie on Deism, and Hales' Chronology, vol. i, 
p. 412. 

Note 26, Page 49. 

See Bishop Home's Sermon on " The Christian 
Race," Discourses, &c. vol. iii. p. 201. 

Note 27, Page 50. 

See them enumerated, with their fulfilment, in 
Home's Introduction, &c, vol. i. p. 492, seq., or in 



NOTES. 



103 



Dr. Pye Smith's Scripture Testimony to the 
Messiah. 

Note 28, Page 51. 
Hales' Chronology, vol. ii. pp. 147, 151. 

Note 29, Page 53. 
" We are evidently taught in the Scriptures that 
our Lord and Saviour Christ consisteth of two 
several natures ; of his Manhood, being thereby 
perfect man; and of his Godhead, being thereby 
perfect God. It is written, The Word, that is to 
say, the second person in the Trinity, became flesh. 
God sending his own Son in the similitude of sinful 
^flesh. fulfilled those things w^hich the law could not. 
Christ, being in form of God, took on him the form 
of a servant, and was made like unto man, being 
found in shape as a man. God was showed in flesh 7 
justified in spirit, seen of angels, preached to the 
Gentiles, believed on in the world, and received up 
in glory. Also in another place, There is one 
God, and one Mediator between God and man, even 
the man Jesus Christ. These be plain places for 
the proof and declaration of both natures, united 
and knit together in one Christ. Let us diligently 
consider and weigh the works that he did while he 
lived on earth, and we shall thereby also perceive 
the self-same thing to be most true. In that he 
did hunger and thirst, eat and drink, sleep and 
wake, in that he preached his Gospel to the people ; 



104 



NOTES. 



in that he wept and sorrowed for Jerusalem, in that 
he paid tribute for himself and Peter, in that he 
died and suffered death, what other thing did he 
else declare, but only this, that he was perfect Man, 
as we are ? For which cause he is called in Holy 
Scripture sometime the Son of David, sometime 
the Son of Man, sometime the Son of Mary, some- 
time the Son of Joseph, and so forth. Now, in that 
he forgave sins, in that he wrought miracles, in 
that he did cast out devils, in that he healed men 
with his only word, in that he knew the thoughts of 
men's hearts, in that he had the seas at his com- 
mandment, in that he walked on the water, in that 
he rose from death to life, in that he ascended into 
heaven, and so forth, what other thing did he 
show therein but only that he was perfect God ? 
coequal with the Father as touching his deity? 
Therefore he saith, The Father and I are all one . 
which is to be understood of his Godhead. For as 
touching his Manhood, he saith, The Father is greater 
than I am. Where are now those Marcionites, that 
deny Christ to have been born in the flesh, or to 
have been perfect Man ? Where are now those 
Arians, which deny Christ to have been perfect 
God, of equal substance with the Father ? If there 
be any such, we may easily reprove them with these 
testimonies of God's word, and such other ; w here- 
unto I am most sure they shall never be able to 
answer. For the necessity of our salvation did 
require such a Mediator and Saviour, as under one 



NOTES. 



105 



person should be a partaker of both natures : it was 
requisite he should be man ; it was also requisite he 
should be God. For as the trangression came by 
man, so was it meet the satisfaction should be made 
by man. And because death, according to St. 
Paul, is the just stipend and reward of sin ; 
therefore, to appease the wrath of God, and to 
satisfy his justice, it was expedient that our 
Mediator should be such a one as might take upon 
him the sins of mankind, and sustain the due 
punishment thereof, namely, death. Moreover he 
came in flesh, and in the self-same flesh ascended 
into heaven, to declare and testify unto us, that all 
faithful people which stedfastly believe in him shall 
likewise come unto the same mansion-place, where- 
unto he, being our chief Captain, is gone before. 
Last of all, he became man, that we thereby might 
receive the greater comfort, as well in our prayers 
as also in our adversity, considering with ourselves 
that we have a Mediator that is true Man as we 
are, who also is touched with our mfirmities, and 
was tempted even in like sort as we are. For 
these, and sundry other causes, it was most needful 
he should come as he did in the flesh. 

" But because no creature, in that he is only a 
creature, hath or may have power to destroy death, 
and give life; to overcome hell, and purchase 
heaven ; to remit sins, and give righteousness : 
therefore it was needful that our Messias, whose 
proper duty and office that was, should be not only 

F 5 



106 



NOTES. 



full and perfect man,but also full and perfect God, to 
the intent he might more fully and perfectly make 
satisfaction for mankind. God saith, This is my 
well-beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. By 
which place we learn, that Christ appeased and 
quenched the wrath of his Father ; not in that he 
was only the Son of Man, but much more in that 
he was the Son of God." — Homily of the Nativity* 

Note 30, Page 54. 

It will be sufficient to cite, as literally translated 
by Dr. Hales, the eloquent eulogy of Rousseau ; — 

" I confess to you, also, that the majesty of the 
Scriptures, and the holiness of the Gospel, touches 
my heart. View the books of the philosophers, with 
all their pomp ; how little do they appear placed 
beside this ! Is it possible that a book at once 
so sublime and simple can be the work of 
man ? Is it possible that he whose history it 
records, can be but a mere man ? Does he speak 
in the tone of an enthusiast, or of an ambitious 
sectary? What mildness and purity in his man- 
ners ! what persuasive grace in his instructions ! 
what elevation in his maxims ! what profound wis- 
dom in his discourses ! what presence of mind, what 
ingenuity, and what justness, in his answers ! what 
empire over his passions! Where is the man, where 
is the sage, who knows how to act, to suffer, and 
to die, without weakness, and without ostentation ? 
" When Plato paints his imaginary just man. 



NOTES. 



107 



covered with all the infamy of vice, though worthy 
of all the rewards of virtue, he paints the exact 
traits of Jesus Christ : the resemblance is so 
striking that all the Fathers perceived it ; and 
indeed, it is not possible to be deceived therein. 
And what prejudices, what blindness, must possess 
the man that dares to compare the son of Sophro- 
niscus with the Son of Mary ? What an immense 
distance between them ! Socrates, dying*without 
pain, without ignominy, easily supported to the last 
his character ; and if this easy death had not cast a 
lustre on his life, it might have been doubted 
whether Socrates, with all his genius, was anything 
more than a Sophist.* It may be said, he invented 
morality ; but before him others had practised it ; 
he only said what they had done, and reduced to 
lessons their examples. Aristides had been just, 
before Socrates had said what justice was. Leoni- 
das died for his country, before Socrates had made 
love of country a duty. Sparta was sober, before 
Socrates had praised sobriety ; before he had defined 
virtue, Greece abounded with virtuous men. 

" But where did Jesus, among his countrymen, 
take the pattern of this elevated and pure morality, 
of which he alone has given both the precepts and 
the example ? From the bosom of the most furious 
fanaticism, the highest wisdom made herself be 
heard ; and the simplicity of the most heroic virtues 
honoured the vilest of all the people of the earth. 

* It can hardly be necessary for me to protest against this unjust 
censure ; in other respects the contrast holds. 



108 



NOTES. 



" The death of Socrates philosophizing tranquilly 
with his friends, is the mildest one could wish for ; 
that of Jesus, expiring in torments, blasphemed, 
reviled, and execrated by a whole people, is the 
most horrible one could dread. Socrates, taking the 
cup of poison, blessed him who presented it, and 
who wept ; Jesus, in the midst of a frightful pun- 
ishment, prayed for his blood-thirsty executioners. 
Yes, if the life and death of Socrates be that of a 
Sage, the life and death of Jesus is that of a God P* 

Note 31, Page 56. 

*« As God, in the death of our Lord, did manifest 
his wrath toward us, and execute his justice upon 
us, so in raising him thence, correspondently God 
did express himself appeased, and his law to be 
satisfied ; as we in his suffering were punished, (the 
iniquity of us all being laid upon him,) so in his 
resurrection we were acquitted and restored to 
grace ; as Christ did merit the remission of our sins 
and the acceptance of our persons by his passion, so 
God did consign them to us in his resurrection ; it 
being that formal act of grace, whereby, having 
sustained the brunt of God's displeasure, He was 
solemnly reinstated in favour, and we representa- 
tively, or virtually, in Him ; so that (supposing our 
due qualifications, and the performance requisite 
on our parts) we thence become completely justified, 
having not only a just title to what justification 
does import, but a real instatement therein confirmed 
by the resurrection of our Saviour ; whence 6 he was/ 



NOTES. 



109 



says St. Paul, < delivered for our offences, and raised 
again for our justification and, 6 who then,' says 
the same apostle, ' shall lay anything to the charge 
of God's elect? It is God that justifieth: who is 
he that condemneth ? It is Christ that died, yea 
rather, that is risen again:' our justification and 
absolution are, ye see, rather ascribed to the resur- 
rection of Christ than to his death ; for that indeed 
his death was a ground of bestowing them, but his 
resurrection did accomplish the collation of them ; 
for since, does the Apostle argue, God has acknow- 
ledged satisfaction done to his justice, by discharging 
our surety from restraint and from all further 
prosecution ; since in a manner so notorious God has 
declared his favour towards our proxy ; what 
pretence can be alleged against us, what suspicion 
of displeasure can remain ? Had Christ only died, 
we should not have been condemned, our punishment 
being already undergone ; yet had we not been fully 
discharged, without that express warrant and ac- 
quittance which his rising does imply ; so again may 
St. Paul be understood to intimate, when he says, 
' If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are 
yet in your sins ;' death (or that obligation to die, 
to which we did all for our transgressions stand 
devoted) was * condemned/ and judicially ' abo- 
lished' by his death, but it was executed and 
expunged in his resurrection ; in which 6 trampling 
thereon,' he crushed it to nothing ; wherefore 
therein mankind revived and received 6 the gift of 



no 



NOTES. 



immortality; 5 that being a clear pledge and full 
security, that 6 as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall 
all be made alive !' . . . Therein not only the natural 
body of Christ was raised, but the mystical body 
also, each member of his church was restored 
to life, being thoroughly rescued from the bondage 
of corruption, and translated into a state of immor- 
tality ; so that ' God,' says St. Paul, 6 has 
quickened us together with Christ, and raised us 
together, and made us to sit together in heavenly 
places in Christ Jesus.' 

"Hence in our baptism, (wherein justification and 
a title to eternal life are exhibited to us,) as the 
death and burial of Christ are symbolically under- 
gone by us, so therein also we do interpretatively 
rise with him ; 6 Being,' says St. Paul, < buried 
with Christ in baptism, in it we are also raised 
together with him and ' baptism/ St. Peter tells 
us, being antitype of the passage through the flood, 
6 does save us by the resurrection of Christ,' pre- 
sented therein." — Harrow's Sermon on the Resurrec- 
tion^ Works, vol. v. pp. 64 — 78 ; or in Dr. Words- 
worth's Christian Institutes, vol. ii. p. 376, sqq. 

Note 32, Page 60. 

See Gal iii. 10—14, 24 ; Rom. iii. 19—28, 31. 

" Before Christ's coming into the world, all men 
universally, in Adam, were nothing else but a 
wicked and crooked generation, rotten and corrupt 



NOTES. 



Ill 



trees, stony ground, full of brambles and briers, 
lost sheep, prodigal sons, naughty, unprofitable 
servants, unrighteous stewards, workers of iniquity, 
the brood of adders, blind guides, sitting in darkness 
and in the shadow of death ; to be short, nothing 
else but children of perdition, and inheritors of hell- 
fire. To this doth St. Paul bear witness in divers 
places of his epistles, and Christ also himself in 
sundry places of his Gospel. But after that He 
was once come down from heaven, and had taken 
our frail nature upon Him, He made all them that 
would receive Him truly, and believe his Word, 
good trees, and good ground, fruitful and pleasant 
branches, children of light, citizens of heaven, sheep 
of his fold, members of his body, heirs of his king- 
dom, his true friends and brethren, sweet and lively 
bread, the elect and chosen people of God. For 
as St. Peter saith in his first epistle, and second 
chapter, He bare our sins in his body upon the 
cross, He healed us, and made us whole by his 
stripes ; and, whereas before we were sheep going 
astray, He, by his coming, brought us home again 
to the true Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, 
making us a chosen generation, a roya] priesthood, an 
holy nation, a particular people of God, in that He 
died for our offences and rose for our justification, 
St. Paul to Timothy, the third chapter ; We were, 
(saith he) in times past, unwise, disobedient, de- 
ceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in 
hatred, envy, maliciousness, and so forth. 



112 



NOTES. 



" But after the loving-kindness of God our Sa- 
viour appeared towards mankind, not according to 
the righteousness that we had done, but according 
to his great mercy He saved us by the fountain of 
the new birth, and by the renewing of the Holy 
Ghost, which He poured upon us abundantly, 
through Jesus Christ our Saviour, that we, being 
once justified by his grace, should be heirs of eternal 
life, through hope and faith in his blood. 

" In these, and such other places, is set out before 
our eyes, as it were in a glass, the abundant grace 
of God, received in Christ Jesus, which is so much 
the more wonderful, because it came not of any 
desert of ours, but of his mere and tender mercy, 
even then, when we were his extreme enemies ; 
but for the better understanding and consideration 
of this thing, let us behold the end of his coming, 
so shall we perceive what great commodity and 
profit his nativity hath brought unto us miserable 
and sinful creatures. The end of his coming was 
to save and deliver his people, to fulfil the law for 
us, to bear witness unto the truth, to teach and 
preach the words of his Father, to give light unto 
the world, to call sinners to repentance, to refresh 
them that labour and be heavy-laden, to cast out 
the prince of this world, to reconcile us in the body 
of his flesh, to dissolve the works of the devil ; last 
of all, to become a propitiation for our sins, and not 
for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole 
world. 



NOTES. 



113 



" These were the chief ends wherefore Christ 
became man ; not for any profit that should come 
to himself thereby, but only for our sakes, that we 
might understand the will of God, be partakers of 
his heavenly light, be delivered out of the devil's 
claws, released from the burden of sin, justified 
through faith in his blood, and, finally, received up 
into everlasting glory, there to reign with Him for 
ever. Was not this a great and singular love of 
Christ towards mankind, that being the express 
and lively image of God, He would, notwithstand- 
ing, humble himself, and take upon Him the form 
of a servant, and that only to save and redeem us ? 
O how much are we bound to the goodness of God 
in this behalf! How many thanks and praises do 
we owe unto Him for this our salvation, wrought 
by his dear and only Son Christ ! who be- 
came a pilgrim on earth, to make us citizens in 
heaven ; who became the Son of man, to make us 
the sons of God; who became obedient to the 
Law, to deliver us from the curse of the Law ; who 
became poor, to make us rich ; vile, to make us 
precious ; subject to death, to make us live for 
ever ! What greater love could we silly creatures 
desire or wish to have at God's hands ! 

" Therefore, (dearly beloved !) let us not forget 
this exceeding love of our Lord and Saviour ; let 
us not show ourselves unmindful or unthankful 
towards Him ; but let us love Him, fear Him, obey 
Him, and serve Him. Let us confess Him with 



114 



NOTES. 



our mouths, praise Him with our tongues, believe on 
Him with our hearts, and glorify Him with our good 
works. Christ is the Light, let us receive the Light. 
Christ is the Truth, let us believe the Truth. Christ 
is the Way, let us follow the Way. And because 
He is our only Master, our only Teacher, our only 
Shepherd, and chief Captain ; therefore let us be- 
come his servants, his scholars, his sheep, and his 
soldiers. As for sin, the flesh, the world, and the 
devil, whose servants and bondslaves we were be- 
fore Christ's coming, let us utterly cast them off, 
and defy them, as the chief and only enemies of 
our soul. And seeing we are once delivered from 
their cruel tyranny by Christ, let us never fall into 
their hands again, lest we chance to be in a worse 
case than ever we were before. Happy are they, 
saith the Scripture, that continue to the end. Be 
faithful (saith God) until death, and I will give 
thee a crown of life. Again, He saith, in another 
place, He that putteth his hand unto the plough, 
and looketh back, is not meet for the kingdom of 
God. Therefore let us be strong, stedfast, and 
unmoveable, abounding always in the work of the 
Lord. Let us receive Christ, not for a time, but 
for ever ; let us believe his Word, not for a time, 
but for ever ; let us become his servants, not for a 
time, but for ever ; in consideration that he hath 
redeemed and saved us, not for a time, but for ever ; 
and will receive us into his heavenly kingdom, 
there to reign with Him, not for a time, but for 



NOTES. 



115 



ever. To Him, therefore, with the Father, and the 
Holy Ghost, be all honour, praise, and glory, for 
ever and ever. Amen." — Homily of the Nativity. 

Note 33, Page 61. 

" In our justification by Christ, it is not all one 
thing, the office of God unto man, and the office of 
man unto God. Justification is not the office of 
man, but of God ; for man cannot make himself 
righteous by his own works, neither in the part, 
nor in the whole, for that were the greatest arro- 
gancy and presumption of man that Antichrist 
could set up against God, to affirm that a man might, 
by his own works, take away and purge his own 
sins, and so justify himself. But justification is the 
office of God only, and is not a thing which we 
render unto Him,, but which we receive of Him ; not 
which we give to Him, but which we take of Him, 
by his free mercy, and by the only merits of his 
most dearly -beloved Son, our only Redeemer, Sa- 
viour, and Justifier, Jesus Christ : So that the true 
understanding of this doctrine, We be justified freely 
by faith without works, or that we be justified by faith 
in Christ only, is not, that this our own act to believe 
in Christ, or this our faith in Christ, which is within 
us, doth justify us, and deserve our justification 
unto us, (for that were to count ourselves to be 
justified by some act or virtue that is within our- 
selves,) but the true understanding and meaning 



116 



NOTES, 



thereof is, that although we hear God's word and 
believe it, although we have faith, hope, charity, 
repentance, dread, and fear of God within us, and 
do never so many works thereunto, yet we must 
renounce the merit of all our said virtues, of faith, 
hope, charity, and all other virtues and good deeds, 
which we either have done, shall do, or can do, as 
things that be far too weak, and insufficient, and 
imperfect, to deserve remission of our sins, and our 
justification ; and therefore we must trust only in 
God's mercy, and that sacrifice which our High 
Priest and Saviour, Christ Jesus, the Son of God, 
once offered for us upon the cross, to obtain thereby 
God's grace and remission, as well of our original 
sin by baptism, as of all actual sin committed by 
us after our baptism, if we truly repent and turn 
unfeignedly to Him again. So that as St. John 
Baptist, although he were never so virtuous and 
godly a man, yet in this matter of forgiving of sin, 
he did put the people from him, and appointed them 
unto Christ, saying thus unto them, Behold, yonder 
is the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of 
the world : even so, as great and godly a virtue as 
the lively faith is, yet it putteth us from itself, and 
remitteth or appointed) us unto Christ, for to have 
only by Him remission of our sins, or justification. 
So that our faith in Christ (as it were) saith unto 
us thus, It is not I that take away your sins, but 
it is Christ only, and to Him only I send you for 



NOTES. 



117 



that purpose, forsaking therein all your good vir- 
tues, words, thoughts, and works, and only putting 
your trust in Christ." — Archbishop Cranmer's Ser- 
mon on the Salvation of all Mankind, by only Christ 
our Saviour, from sin and death everlasting . 
Second Part. This is the Homily referred to in 
the eleventh Article of the Church of England, 
under the title of " the Homily of Justification," 
as fully embodying its opinion on this important 
point. See also Barrow's Sermon on Justification 
by Faith, Works, vol. iv. p. 117, sqq. ; or in Dr. 
Wordsworth's Christian Institutes, vol. ii. p. 106, 
sqq. 

Note 34, Page 64. 
" Sermon of the Salvation of all Mankind, &c." 

Note 35, Page 70. 

See the " Natural History of Enthusiasm," 
Section iii. 

Note 36, Page 71. 

That Christ died, not merely for those who are 
saved, but for those also who perish ; or conversely, 
that those may perish for whom Christ died, is clear 
from Romans xiv. 15 ; and 1 Corinthians viii. 11. 



118 



NOTES. 



Note 37, Page 74. 

" And if you be afraid to fall into error by read- 
ing of Holy Scripture, I shall show you how you 
may read without danger of error. Read it humbly, 
with a meek and lowly heart, to the intent you 
may glorify God, and not yourself, with the know- 
ledge of it ; and read it not without daily praying 
to God, that He would direct your reading to good 
effect. And take upon you to expound it no far- 
ther than you can plainly understand it. For (as 
St. Augustin saith) the knowledge of Holy Scrip- 
ture is a great, large, and a high place, but the 
door is very low, so that the high and arrogant man 
cannot run in ; but he must stoop low,, and humble 
himself, that shall enter into it. . . . 

" And concerning the hardness of Scripture, he 
that is so weak that he is not able to brook strong 
meat, yet he may suck the sweet and tender milk, 
and defer the rest until he be stronger, and come 
to more knowledge. For Godreceiveth the learned 
and unlearned, and casteth away none, but is in- 
different unto all. And the Scripture is full, as 
well of low valleys, plain ways, and easy for every 
man to use and to walk in, as also of high hills and 
mountains, which few men can climb unto. And 
whosoever giveth his mind to Holy Scriptures, with 
diligent study and burning desire, it cannot be 
(saith St. Chrysostom) that he should be left with- 



NOTES. 



119 



out help. For either God Almighty will send him 
some godly doctor to teach him, as he did to in- 
struct the eunuch, a nobleman of Ethiope, and 
treasurer unto Queen Candace, who having affection 
to read the Scripture, (although he understood it 
not,) yet, for the desire that he had unto God's 
Word, God sent his Apostle Philip to declare unto 
him the true sense of the Scripture that he read ; 
or else, if we lack a learned man to instruct and 
teach us, yet God himself from above will give light 
unto our minds, and teach us those things which 
are necessary for us, and wherein we be ignorant." 
— Homily " of the Knowledge of Holy Scripture." 
Second part. 

Note 38, Page 80. 

See this subject especially discussed in " The 
Physical Theory of another Life," by the author of 
the " Natural History of Enthusiasm," " Saturday 
Evening," &c. 

Note 39, Page 80. 

See especially 1 Thessalonians iv. 13 — 18. But 
this doctrine is implied throughout the Bible ; see 
the various passages, quoted and commented upon by 
the Rev. C. R. Muston, in his ei Recognition in the 
world to come," pp. 105 — 143, fourth edition, 



120 



NOTES. 



Note 40, Page 81. 
Rev* Henry Blunt' s Sermons, p. 182. 

Note 41, Page 82. 

See Bishop Home's Discourse on the Existence 
and Employments ot the Holy Angels, vol. iv. 
p. 311. 

Note 42, Page 84. 

References to these will be found in Mr. Home's 
Introduction, &c, so often alluded to. 



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